ACT for America

U.S. says group battling Ethiopians is linked to al-Qaida

TwinCities.com
November 6, 2009
by David Hanners

With clear, straight answers, a St. Anthony man admitted to a federal judge Monday that he lied to a grand jury when he denied knowing men who had returned to Somalia to fight Ethiopian troops who were occupying their homeland.

Adarus Abdulle Ali, 25, said he was scared when he was called to testify before the grand jury in Minneapolis, and that's why he didn't tell the truth — that he knew the men and knew why they were going to Somalia.

In pleading guilty to a single count of perjury, Ali became the fourth person to enter a guilty plea in connection with the exodus of young local Somali men back to Africa to take up arms for a group that the State Department says is a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaida.

A fifth man accused of lying to FBI agents investigating the case has pleaded not guilty.

A federal grand jury has been investigating the travels of at least 20 men — some in the Somali community say the number is higher — back to the African nation that has been a battleground of warring factions since a 1991 coup left the country of 7 million without a government.

In 2006, a transitional government brought in Ethiopian troops to oust Islamist forces from Mogadishu, the nation's capital. Some Somalis viewed the foreign soldiers as invaders; among the groups who fought the Ethiopians was al-Shabaab, which the U.S. government designated as a terrorist organization in February 2008 because it allegedly had ties to al-Qaida.

While the transitional government sought to cast the Ethiopians as a stabilizing force, Ali left no question how he viewed them when he answered U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum's questions during the 27-minute-long hearing.

"I knew about two guys who wanted to go back to Somalia ... to fight against the Ethiopians who had invaded the country," Ali told Rosenbaum.

Ali said that the men he knew had returned to Somalia in November or December 2007 and that when he was called before the grand jury in December, he denied knowing about it.

"I told the grand jury that I didn't know anything about it," he told Rosenbaum.

He said he was scared when he was subpoenaed to appear before the panel and didn't believe that what the men returning to Somalia had done was illegal.

"I didn't know that them going back to Somalia to do what they did was wrong at the time," he said.

Rosenbaum asked him if he had understood his oath to tell the truth to the panel. "Were you confused?" the judge asked.

"I was just scared," Ali replied. Throughout the hearing, Ali stood erect and attentive, and his answers were loud and clear, generally unhesitating. He said his guilty plea was the result of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

After the hearing, Ali's lawyer, Stephen Smith, said that Ali now knows he broke the law and that he is taking responsibility for it.

"He's a nice guy who made a bad decision," Smith said. "He got himself in a bad situation with some folks who were misguided in what they wanted to do, and he lied about it."

Assistant U.S. Attorney W. Anders Folk declined to comment after the hearing.

The felony information against Ali — the charging document — was filed Oct. 27 but was not unsealed until Monday.

It claims that on Dec. 17, he perjured himself when "he testified that he did not know anyone who traveled to Somalia with an individual known to law enforcement ('Individual A'), when, in fact, the defendant attended a meeting in which Individual A and others discussed traveling to Somalia to fight against Ethiopians."

The document says Ali also drove "Individual A" and another unidentified person to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for their flight abroad, "and the defendant knew that Individual A and at least one other person were traveling together from Minnesota to Somalia to fight against the Ethiopians."

Ali has no prior criminal record, and Rosenbaum allowed him to remain free on a $25,000 unsecured bond. No date for sentencing has been set, but the judge told Ali that under federal sentencing guidelines, he could face 41 to 60 months in prison, as well as three years' supervised release when he got out of prison.

Of the four men charged so far in connection with the Somali exodus, three have been accused of returning to Africa to train with al-Shabaab, which is Arabic for "the youth."

Salah Osman Ahmed, 27, of New Brighton, and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, 25, of Seattle, were indicted in February on charges they provided material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim and injure.

They subsequently entered guilty pleas to providing material support.

Also in February, Kamal Said Hassan, 24, of Plymouth, was named in a felony information accusing him of providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill or maim, and making false statements to the FBI. In a plea bargain in August, he pleaded guilty to the false-statement charge; like Ahmed and Isse, he is awaiting sentencing.

The three had been accused of traveling to Somalia to train in an al-Shabaab camp.

Last month, Abdow Munye Abdow, 25, of Chanhassen, was named in a two-count federal indictment charging he made false statements to FBI agents. They had questioned him about four men with him in a car the Nevada State Patrol stopped for speeding Oct. 6, just north of Las Vegas.

Abdow had rented the car, but it was being driven by Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax, 32, of Bloomington, who is on the government's terrorist watch list.

The Nevada state trooper found no evidence that the men were doing anything illegal, so he let them go.

Abdow later allegedly told federal agents his only traveling companion was someone named "Adam" and said he had driven to Las Vegas after having an argument with his wife.

At least two of the men in the car — federal officials won't say who — were later questioned at the U.S.-Mexico border and had tickets for a flight from Tijuana to Mexico City.

Abdow has entered a not-guilty plea to the charges against him, and his next court hearing is scheduled for Nov. 19.

No public charges against Faarax have been filed, but the charges against Ahmed, Isse and Hassan were filed secretly and remained sealed for several months before they were made public.