comment by Jerry Gordon

Are America’s enemies operating freely from inside the country? Patrick Poole reports on one Somali terrorist leader’s hassle-free trip to Minneapolis.

by Patrick Poole, Pajama Media, December 14, 2007

Nearly 15 years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 6 years after 9/11, the federal agencies responsible for our domestic security against terrorism appear to be entirely unaware, unequipped and unconcerned about the continued operations of Islamic terrorists inside the US.

Exhibit A in support of this thesis is the recent fund raising visit to the US by major Somali terrorist leader Zakaria Mahmoud Haji-Abdi. Abdi is deputy chairman of the Eritrean-based Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS). The ARS is organizationally integrated with the al-Qaeda-backed Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which is waging the deadly terrorist insurgency in Somalia against the UN and US recognized Transnational Federal Government (TFG). The insurgency is responsible for the violence that has caused the deaths of nearly 6,000 Somalis this year in Mogadishu alone and forced at least another half million refugees to flee from there.
Abdi was the keynote speaker at a fundraising event and conference hosted by the United Somali Diaspora and held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Minneapolis on November 24. An article published the following day by SomaliTalk (in Somali) features numerous pictures of the event, documenting Abdi’s attendance. (Minneapolis is home to the largest Somali population in the country.) A follow-up conference was held the following weekend at the Days Inn in Falls Church, VA, (right outside Washington, D.C.) by United Somali Diaspora and several other US-based Somali groups.

Some in the US Somali community, however, are actively speaking out against the ARS terror campaign and their fundraising efforts in the West.

Abdirahman Warsame, Executive Director of the Terror Free Somalia Foundation, expressed his opposition to the conference agenda and Abdi’s terrorist fundraising mission. “This event was definitely intended to organize and mobilize the extreme elements of the Somali community here to support the armed struggle against the internationally recognized Somali government and oppose US foreign policy,” Warsame said. “Abdi was openly calling for jihad and directing supporters to use the underground hawala networks to circumvent US controls to prevent terrorism financing overseas. These funds will be used to support the insurgency that is killing civilians, civil servants and anyone who works for or with the government, in order to further weaken the country and open the doors for foreign terrorists to take control of the country. Why would this man be allowed in the US?”

According to one law enforcement source familiar with Abdi’s recent visit, the Department of Homeland Security was contacted more than a week before the Minneapolis conference. The agency determined that, since Abdi did not have a Social Security Number (he is neither a US citizen or resident) and it was not known where he would enter the US from, nothing could or would be done to stop his visit. Repeated phone calls and emails from this reporter to the DHS public affairs office asking for explanation on why Abdi was allowed in the country did not receive a reply.

The failure of Homeland Security to act in any way to keep Abdi out of the country prompted heated criticism of the agency by Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “It is absolutely scandalous that federal authorities cannot or will not stop jihadists from entering the US. Homeland Security should be called Homeland Insecurity,” Emerson said. (Continue reading this article).