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East County News Service
April 20, 2015 (San Diego)—The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota have announced that six Somali-American men have been charged with conspiracy to support a terrorism organization, including two who were arrested in San Diego.
The six men, all from Minnesota, were allegedly trying to travel to Syria to join Islamic State forces, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The two men arrested in San Diego were Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 21 a U.S. citizen and Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 21, a Somali citizen and permanent legal resident in the U.S.
According to the complaint, which has been unsealed, the two men planned to obtain forged passports, then travel through Mexico to ultimately reach Syria.
Federal authorities were tipped off by a confidential informant who initially planned to also join ISIS, but changed his mind. An undercover FBI agent posed as a provider of false passports and also offered to buy Daud’s vehicle to finance his travel expenses.
Four others charged in Mineapolis, Minnesota are Adnan Abdihamid Farah, 19; Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, 19; Hanad Mustafe Musse, 19; and Guled Ali Omar, 20. Another man, Ahmed Omar, remains a fugitive.
Some of the men arrested had previously been stopped by authorities. In a press conference, U.S. Attorney Andy Luger called the defendants “focused men who were intent on joining a terrorist organization.” He added, “As described in the criminal complaint, these men worked over the course of the last 10 months to join ISIL. Even when their co-conspirators were caught and charged, they continued to seek new and creative ways to leave Minnesota to fight for a terror group
Minneapolis and San Diego have the two largest populations of Somali-Americans in the United States.
This is not the first time Somalis from Minnesota have traveled to San Diego seeking to join foreign terrorist fighters. In 2009, four Somali men drove from Minneapolis to San Diego, entered Mexico and then traveled overseas to fight with al-Shabab Islamic terrorists in Somalia.
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