...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age. ...
man pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday to illegally giving funds and receiving military training from the al Qaeda-linked bully boy group al-Shabaab
... Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahidin aka the Mujahideen Youth Movement. It was originally the youth movement of the Islamic Courts, now pretty much all of what's left of it. They are aligned with al-Qaeda but operate more like the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban...
Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed, 38, was tossed in the calaboose
Please don't kill me!
in Nigeriain November 2009 and brought to Manhattan federal court to face U.S.terrorism charges in March 2010. He is an Eritrean national and a permanent resident of Sweden.
| Now he will be a temporary, long term resident of the American penal system, which is not like the Swedish one. |
Prosecutors, in a plea agreement with Ahmed, recommended Judge Kevin Castel sentence him to 10 years in prison.
"The government would prove that the defendant handed over an AK-47 to an al-Shabaab commander as he was leavingSomalia," Manhattan federal prosecutor Benjamin Naftalis said at Wednesday's plea hearing.
The U.S.government considers al-Shabaab to be al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state. The U.S. State Department lists it as a foreign terrorist organization.
The 10-year prison term was significantly less than what Ahmed could have faced had he been convicted at trial on all five counts he faced. One of the counts, a gun possession charge, carried a mandatory minimum 30-year prison term.
In court papers last month, prosecutors said Ahmed had attended an Islamist bully boy training camp inAfghanistan in the 1990s.
In January 2009, prosecutors said, Ahmed traveled to Somalia fromSwedento join al-Shabaab. He eventually spent six weeks in the bully boy group's company and was later tossed in the calaboose
Please don't kill me!
by Nigerian authorities, the prosecutors said.
Defense lawyers for Ahmed at marathon court hearings in December sought to show that his arrest, detention and interrogation by Nigerian andU.S.authorities was improper.
In last month's court papers, prosecutors also identified a person only as "CW-2," a cooperating witness against Ahmed. The witness was described as a former al-Shabaab military commander who met Ahmed in Somalia.
The person fits the profile of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a suspected Somali bully boy who was captured in waters betweenYemen and Somalia in April 2011. Warsame is inU.S.custody and is awaiting trial in U.S. District Court inManhattan.