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Four Somali immigrants convicted of supporting militants
[MOBILE.REUTERS] Four Somali immigrants, including a popular imam at a San Diego-area mosque, were convicted by a U.S. federal jury on Friday of conspiring to provide material support to an al Qaeda-linked Islamist militia in the Horn of Africa nation.The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, said that the men - the imam, two cab drivers and an employee at a money transmitting business - had conspired to raise and send money to Somali al-Shabaab  ... the personification of Somali state failure... rebels. Al-Shabaab beturbanned goons want to impose a strict version of Islamic law in war-ravaged Somalia, but have lost significant territory in the southern and central parts of the country in the face of an offensive by African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... troops. According to the evidence presented at trial, the men conspired to transfer funds from San Diego to Somalia through the Shidaal Express, a now-defunct money transmitting business in San Diego. The U.S. Attorney's office said the jury had listened to intercepted phone conversations between one of the men, San Diego cab driver Basaaly Saeed Moalin, and an al-Shabaab leader who was later killed in a U.S. Aden Hashi Ayro implored the cab driver in those calls to send money to al-Shabaab, telling him it was "time to finance the Jihad." "You are running late with the stuff. Send some and something will happen," Ayro told Moalin. He also repeatedly asked him to reach out to Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud - a holy man at the City Heights mosque - to obtain funds for the group. U.S. warplanes killed Ayro, the Afghan-trained then-leader of al-Shabaab who was said to be al Qaeda's top man in the country, in 2008. Under Ayro, al-Shabaab had adopted Iraq-style tactics, including liquidations, roadside kabooms and suicide kabooms. Prosecutors also presented a recorded telephone conversation in which Moalin gave the rebels permission to use his house in the capital Mogadishu. Prosecutors argued he was offering the home as a place to hide weapons. Posted by: Fred 2013-02-24 |
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