Vol. 80/No. 22      June 6, 2016

 

Minnesota frame-up of Somalis relies on FBI snitches

 
MINNEAPOLIS — “We are here, the mothers of these three boys, asking you to join in the outcry against this trial,” Fadumo Hussein told some 30 people protesting outside the U.S. District Courthouse here May 12 after the third day of the trial of her son, Guled Omar, 21. “We face a wall of lies with paid FBI informants and entrapment. They never went anywhere. They never did anything. And for this my son faces life in prison,” said Hussein at the rally, one of several demonstrations to take place at the courthouse.

Omar is on trial along with Abdirahman Daud and Mohamed Farah, both 22, accused of planning to travel to Syria to join Islamic State. The primary charges against them are “conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization” and “conspiracy to murder outside the United States,” which carries a possible sentence of life imprisonment. They were arrested in 2015 along with six others who pleaded guilty in exchange for deals from the government. The cops say a 10th youth they charged is now in Syria.

The government’s case is based on paid informers, wiretapping and video surveillance. Last August court documents revealed that one FBI snitch was paid $41,000 to record conversations and told the men he had a connection that could provide false passports. In charging the three with “conspiracy,” the government avoids the need to prove they committed actions.

Abdullahi Yusuf, who was arrested in 2014 and agreed to testify against his friends in a plea agreement, took the stand on the fifth day of the trial.

Abdirahman Bashiir, the government’s star witness, then testified for five days, explaining he was paid some $119,000 for work with the FBI that included taping conversations and pushing a plan to leave the country that resulted in the arrest of Daud and Farah.

The largest courtroom was packed during the trial. On the first day U.S. District Judge Michael Davis rejected a motion from Farah’s attorney, Murad Mohammad, to withdraw from the case because of a “breakdown in communication.” Farah told the judge Mohammad pressured him to plead guilty.

Davis cautioned prospective jurists saying, “It’s terrorism. And everyone’s heard of that and everyone has certain thoughts about that.” A jury of eight men and eight women, all Caucasian, was selected.

In April, when one of the defense attorneys asked for an instruction to the jury that the men may have thought they were traveling abroad to fight to defend others, Davis replied, “I’m shutting the door on this. This is not a political trial.”

For years the FBI and other federal cop agencies have spied on and harassed the 75,000-strong Somali community here. They’ve seized on the arrests and recruitment efforts of reactionary groups such as Islamic State to intensify their probes. They also launched the Countering Violent Extremism pilot program, which promotes collaboration between the FBI and other police agencies and schools, community organizations and local officials in the Somali community, doling out grant money to selected groups.

“This trial is the latest attack on the rights of Somalis living here,” David Rosenfeld, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress in Minnesota, told participants in a May 19 protest outside the courthouse. “The U.S. government and its political police, with their use of paid informers, entrapment and conspiracy charges, are setting a dangerous precedent that can be used against the labor movement and the entire working class.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home