Terror finance termagant finally sentenced

Local Somali activist says financier “deserves the Nobel Prize”

Amina Farah Ali was convicted in 2011 of supporting terrorism by collecting donations and transferring them to al-Shabaab for jihad in Somalia.  Her sentencing took place last week.  Ali could have been sent to prison for 195 years, but the federal judge Michael Davis imposed a 20-year sentence.

Despite Judge Davis’s lenience toward Ali, CAIR is filing a complaint against him over questions he asked her during sentencing (h/t @1389).

The Minneapolis Star Tribune recorded the reaction from the Somali community following the sentence.  Activist Abdinasir Abdi declared “Amina was a good woman, a mother, a teacher, educator, humanitarian worker. I think she deserves the Nobel Prize because she is a great humanitarian.”  Other Somali leaders blamed the situation on U.S. foreign policy, and one woman brandished a sign saying that Ali is her hero:

Ali’s partner in crime, Hawo Mohamed Hassan, was sentenced to 10 years.  The Tribune also has the report:

Two Rochester women get 10, 20 years for aiding Somalia terrorists

Article by: RANDY FURST , Star Tribune

Updated: May 17, 2013

One got 10 years in prison, the other 20 for funneling money to a group fighting in Somalia.

Two Rochester women were sentenced to federal prison Thursday for their roles in funneling money to an organization the U.S. government has called a terrorist group fighting in Somalia.

Hawo Mohamed Hassan, 66, who got 10 years in prison, and Amina Farah Ali, 36, who got 20, were the last of nine people sentenced in federal court in Minneapolis this week.

The group was the first set of defendants sent to prison from Minneapolis in this country’s largest anti-terrorism investigation since Sept. 11, 2001.

U.S. Chief Judge Michael Davis handed down the sentences before a courtroom packed with the defendants’ families and members of the Somali-American community.

The drama capped a federal investigation that lasted more than four years in which U.S. authorities sought to shut down a recruiting effort that lured more than 20 young men to Somalia, several of whom died fighting or in suicide bombings.

The women, both U.S. citizens who came here from Somalia, were convicted in 2011 of conspiring to provide material support to Al-Shabab in fundraising in Rochester that prosecutors have called “a deadly pipeline” of money and fighters from the United State to Somalia.

They have had wide support in the Twin Cities’ Somali-American community, and many in the courtroom were stunned by the sentences, especially the 20-year sentence for Ali.

Hassan Mohamud, a St. Paul imam, said he believes the sentences were too long and that both women should have been released.

“All they did was aid the poor and the orphans,” he said.

But prosecutors said it was clear from the phone conversations they monitored that the women knew they were raising money for Al-Shabab, a group labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 2008.

While Ali said she never knew that funds she raised were going to Al-Shabab, Hassan claimed that she came to realize the organization was getting the money and broke with Ali, preferring that the money go to set up a senior health center.

But prosecutor Jeff Paulsen cited telephone wiretaps that he said showed there had been no rift between the two and that Hassan had a financial investment in the health center and planned to continue to work with Ali.

Ali, sentenced first, denied she did anything wrong. She said she had no knowledge that the money she collected went to Al-Shabab.

Asked by Davis what she knew about Al-Qajda, she indicated she knew nothing about it.

Her attorney, Dan Scott, said “she chose the wrong horse,” adding, “She thought she was doing good work. She was wrong.”

Defendants in the Somali cases have argued that Ethiopia invaded Somalia to support a newly created transitional government that lacked support from the Somali people. They have said that their clients backed the resistance to the invasion.

However, prosecutors argued that the transitional government was recognized by foreign nations, so any support for Al-Shabab, which was fighting the invasion, was against U.S. law as well as support for a terrorist group.

Steven Ward, who prosecuted the case, said Ali was heard on a wiretap supporting Al-Shabab, saying she supported a suicide bombing and “let the civilians die”…

Hafiz Khan convicted for funding the Taliban

Two imams in the U.S. have been convicted of terrorist financing within the span of two weeks.  First there was Imam Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud in San Diego who conspired with fellow Somali immigrants in America to fund al-Shabaab in East Africa, and now Hafiz Khan, the Florida-based imam who transferred money to the Pakistani Taliban.

Given the extensive wiretap and documentary bank evidence against Imam Khan, the case never looked good for him.  When his defense attorneys blundered by putting Khan on the witness stand to deliver listless tirades and tortured explanations of why he said what he said, it looked even worse.

First his lawyers said that Khan was mentally incompetent, but the court didn’t buy that.  Then their story was that Khan provided charitable relief and made investments in a potato chip company in Pakistan.  Then the story changed again to Khan purporting that he had lied to the Taliban in his wiretapped conversations, and that he only offered them money to get more money in return.  The plan was supposedly to give the Taliban $50,000 now to get $1 million back from them later, which would represent an unbelievable 1,900% return on his “investment.”

Did it occur to Mr. Khan or his defense team that there is no legal distinction between giving money to a terrorist organization to wage jihad versus giving money to a terrorist organization as an investment?  In any case, the defense was not plausible, and Khan could not explain his taped statements wishing death upon U.S. troops.  Allowing him to testify in his own defense was a disaster.

Real people have been killed or injured and property has been destroyed in Pakistan because of the TTP, and the TTP was enriched because this man collected money fellow Islamists in Florida.  Khan, an old man, faces a maximum 60 year sentence.  He will surely die in prison.  At least he’ll have the opportunity to say good-bye to his family—an opportunity the TTP’s victims never had.

From the Miami Herald on Mar. 4:

Florida imam convicted in Pakistani Taliban case

By CURT ANDERSON

AP Legal Affairs Writer

MIAMI — An elderly Muslim cleric has been convicted by a Miami federal court jury of providing thousands of dollars in financial support to the Pakistani Taliban.

The 12-person jury returned its verdict Monday after the two-month trial of Hafiz Khan. The 77-year-old imam at a Miami mosque was found guilty of two conspiracy counts and two counts of providing material support to terrorists.

Each charge carries a potential 15-year prison sentence.

Prosecutors built their case largely around hundreds of FBI recordings of conversations in which Khan expressed support for Taliban attacks and discussed sending about $50,000 to Pakistan.

Khan testified the money was for family, charity and business reasons. Khan also said he lied to an FBI informant about Taliban support in hopes of obtaining $1 million from him.

Somali conspirators found guilty as charged

San Diego imam and three cohorts laundered money, financed terror

Two of the four financiers: Imam Mohamed Mohamud (left) and Issa Doreh (right)

Many readers are probably already aware of the conviction as it has received fairly extensive print news coverage.  The best report on the Feb. 22 verdicts comes from the FBI itself:

San Diego Jury Convicts Four Somali Immigrants of Providing Support to Foreign Terrorists

Defendants Sent Money to al Shabaab in Somalia

SAN DIEGO, CA—A federal jury today convicted four Somali immigrants, including a popular imam at a City Heights mosque, of conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist group al Shabaab.

The jury found that the four men—Basaaly Saeed Moalin, a cabdriver in San Diego; Issa Doreh, a worker at a money transmitting business that was the conduit for moving the funds; Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, the imam at a mosque frequented by the city’s immigrant Somali community; and Ahmed Nasiri Taalil Mohamud, a cabdriver from Anaheim—conspired to raise money for the foreign terrorist organization and send it back to Somalia.

During the three-week trial, the United States presented evidence that Moalin, Mohamud, Doreh, and Nasir conspired to provide money to al Shabaab, a violent and brutal militia group in Somalia that engages in suicide bombings, targets civilians for assassination, and uses improvised explosive devices. In February 2008, the U.S. Department of State formally designated al Shabaab as a foreign terrorist organization.

At trial, the jury listened to dozens of the defendants’ intercepted telephone conversations, including many conversations between defendant Moalin and Aden Hashi Ayrow, one of al Shabaab’s most prominent leaders who was subsequently killed in a missile strike on May 1, 2008. In those calls, Ayrow implored Moalin to send money to al Shabaab, telling Moalin that it was “time to finance the Jihad.” Ayrow told Moalin, “You are running late with the stuff. Send some and something will happen.” In the calls played for the jury, Ayrow repeatedly asked Moalin to reach out to defendant Mohamud—the imam—to obtain funds for al Shabaab.

According to the evidence presented at trial, the defendants conspired to transfer the funds from San Diego to Somalia through the Shidaal Express, a now-defunct money transmitting business in San Diego.

The United States also presented a recorded telephone conversation in which defendant Moalin gave the terrorists in Somalia permission to use his house in Mogadishu, Somalia, telling Ayrow that “after you bury your stuff deep in the ground, you would, then, plant the trees on top.” Prosecutors argued at trial that Moalin was offering a place to hide weapons…

Basaaly Moalin, the most malicious and vocal of member of the conspiracy, could be sentenced to a maximum of 80 years in prison, with his co-defendants facing shorter terms.

The disturbing (but frankly unsurprising) involvement of an imam in the conspiracy is not the only important takeaway from this trial.

The critical lesson illustrated by this case is that remittances to Somalia are fraught with risk; ordinary Somali customers undoubtedly used the services of Shidaal Express prior to its closure.  Even customers who had no intention of funding terrorism supplemented Shidaal’s business and indirectly aided al-Shabaab.

Shidaal Express in San Diego

This is why banks have to make very careful decisions about money services businesses (MSBs) that they may take on as commercial clients.  Banks must evaluate whether the risk of supporting terrorism is too high to continue doing business with a particular individual or MSB.

Why on earth would anybody still criticize banks in Minnesota for ceasing to providing money transfer services to Somalia?  The evidence has become far too clear that Somali remittances bear an unacceptable risk of being siphoned off for terrorist purposes.

IPT has previously reported on the details of the money transfers in the San Diego conspiracy, which further illustrate the fundamental riskiness of the Somali remittance business:

The men used hawalas—both registered and unregistered—to move money from the United States to African countries. Two of the hawalas identified—Shidaal Express, Inc.,and North American Money Transfer, Inc.—have a history of money laundering and terror-financing violations, public records show.

Take, for example, North American Money Transfer (NAMT) which is incorporated in Georgia, but has branches in Missouri and elsewhere throughout the United States. In August 2009, the Justice Department charged the company with a series of financial crimes, including operating as an unlicensed money transmitting business in the State of Michigan. According to the indictment, between Jan. 3, 2008 and April 15, 2009, “NAMT wire transferred approximately $12,820,000 from the United States to Africa Horn in the United Arab Emirates, for distribution to the intended recipients in Somalia and other countries located in the Horn of Africa.”

Over a period of 10 months, the defendants in the cases announced Wednesday raised and transferred approximately $26,000 from various locations within the United States to Somalia. Separating the payments into 20 separate transactions, each of them were structured to evade the $3,000 limit that would have required the hawala to verify a name and address of the sender through a photo identification.

Florida imam raised $50K to fund Taliban

Izhar Khan (left) and Hafiz Khan (right)

Prosecutors have the bank records and wiretaps to prove it.  Recorded statements of imam Hafiz Khan, the leading figure in the conspiracy to finance the Pakistani Taliban (a.k.a. Tehrik-e-Taliban) include:

• Asking his son Izhar to pick up $300 from a donor that had been “approved for the mujahideen.”
• Describing his nephew in Pakistan as “a big agent of the Taliban.”
• Stating:  ”Right now I have about 100,000 Pakistani rupees for the Taliban.  People have given me (money) in small amounts, I have given some from my side.”
• After hearing that seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, Hafiz Khan “declared his wish that God bring to death 50,000 more.”

No wonder why defense attorneys tried so hard to argue that Hafiz Khan is mentally incompetent.  They must have known that in addition to the bank records, the statements Khan has made are so damning that the jury will easily find him guilty on four counts of providing material support to terrorists.

Hafiz faces a maximum 60-year prison sentence for these activities.  Meanwhile, Amina Farah Ali, a Muslim woman in Minnesota who was convicted in 2011 for raising and transferring a comparatively lesser amount of $8,600 to terrorists overseas, faces up to 195 years in prison.  In the Ali case, separate transfers of money were treated as separate charges, whereas most of the transfers in this case have been lumped together.

The reason for combining the transfers together is unclear.  The prosecutors must feel that it is the best legal strategy, but Money Jihad counts seven separate transfers in the Khan indictment that could have been broken into separate counts that would have added 105 years to the possible prison sentence.

Hafiz Khan is charged under 18 USC 2339A and 2339B, which outlaw providing “material support” to terrorists.  Often described as a key provision of the Patriot Act, the material support prohibitions of sections 2339A and B actually originate from the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.  The Patriot Act clarified the definition of “material support” and increased the penalties for violations.

FBI raids Arab activist’s home, subpoenas financial records

Hatem Abudayyeh in a 2006 interview

On Friday, WLS-TV in Chicago reported that the FBI has raided the home of Hatem Abudayyeh as part of an investigation into material support of terrorism:

There was no answer Friday night at the Jefferson Park condo where Hatem Abudayyeh lives with his wife and young daughter, but he was there at dawn when the FBI came knocking.

Neighbor Sargon Tamo said that between seven and ten FBI agents came to Abudayyeh’s condo.

“It took a few hours, easily four or five hours, just taking some fingerprints, investigating,” said Tamo.

Abudayyeh is the executive director of the Arab-American Action Network, a Chicago-based community group which has been a critic of U.S. support of Israel.

In addition to being the leader of the Arab-American Action Network, Discover The Networks says that Abudayyeh is the member of another organization that sends delegates overseas to be “indoctrinated with the propaganda of pro-Palestinian militants,” that he refers to the creation of Israel “by the term Al Nakba (Arabic for ‘The Catastrophe’),” and that “In an interview with Dollars and Sense, Abudayyeh defended the Global Relief Foundation (a charity shut down by the United States for funneling money to terrorist groups) and its imprisoned co-founder Rabih Haddad.”

The Global Relief Foundation helped fund the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The FBI also raided the home of Chicago activist Mick Kelly, and issued him a subpoena demanding “all records of any payment provided directly or indirectly to Hatem Abudayyeh.”

Another subpoena was issued to socialist Thomas Burke demanding the same types of records relating to Abudayyeh.

Targets of the raids say it’s all just government harassment of friendly peace activists.  Nothing to see here—just move along.

Breyer, Ginsburg, & Sotomayor: the “right” to provide material support to terrorists

We have the right, through our representatives in Congress, to establish limits on the types of support our citizens can provide to our sworn terrorist enemies.

But Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor are a little more concerned with the free speech rights of terrorist supporters.  Thankfully, these three were outnumbered by six justices who take a more practical approach.  A follow-up to our earlier post on material support:

Supreme Court upholds terrorism support law

(Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a law that bars Americans from providing support to foreign terrorist groups, rejecting arguments that it violated constitutional rights of free speech and association.

The decision came in the first test to reach the Supreme Court after the September 11, 2001, attacks of a case pitting the right of U.S. citizens to speak and associate freely against the government’s efforts to fight terrorism.

In a victory for the Obama administration, the justices voted, 6-3, to reverse a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that declared parts of the law unconstitutionally vague.

The law barring material support was first adopted in 1996 and strengthened by the USA Patriot Act adopted by Congress right after the September 11 attacks. It was amended again in 2004.

The law bars knowingly providing any service, training, expert advice or assistance to any foreign organization designated by the U.S. State Department as terrorist.

The law, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, does not require any proof the defendant intended to further any act of terrorism or violence by the foreign group.

MORE DIFFICULT CASES COULD BE AHEAD

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law was constitutional and rejected the specific challenge before it. He said the court did not address the “more difficult cases” that may arise under the law in the future.

The legal challenge had been brought by groups and individuals who wanted to help the Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. The State Department designated both as foreign terrorist groups.

The Humanitarian Law Project in Los Angeles had previously provided human rights advocacy training to the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, and the main Kurdish political party in Turkey.

The Humanitarian Law group and others sued in an effort to renew support for what they described as lawful, nonviolent activities overseas.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that human rights advocates, providing training and assistance in the nonviolent resolution of disputes, can be prosecuted as terrorists,” said Georgetown University law professor David Cole, who argued the case.

“In the name of fighting terrorism, the court has said that the First Amendment permits Congress to make it a crime to work for peace and human rights. That is wrong,” Cole said.

Obama administration lawyers defended the law and called it a vital weapon in the government’s effort to fight terrorism.

Since 2001, the United States has charged about 150 defendants with the material support of terrorism and about half have been convicted, the Justice Department said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented with Breyer saying the court majority ultimately “deprives the individuals before us of the protection that the First Amendment demands”…

Dutch lawyer to U.S.: funding Islamists is not a crime

The U.S. Patriot Act made providing “material support” to a foreign terrorist organization illegal.

If you’re an attorney for a terrorist, “material support” may sound too vague, broad, and hostile to free speech.  You might even fight the concept of material support all the way to the Supreme Court on behalf of your client.

But the concept really doesn’t require Supreme Court scrutiny.  It is common sense (and perfectly constitutional) for Congress to prohibit supporting terrorists, whether than means financially, logistically, or verbally.

But they must not have a law like the Patriot Act in the Netherlands.  The Dutch don’t want to extradite Mohamud Said Omar, a jihadist who raised funds for Somali Islamists, back to the U.S., and they don’t have much to charge him with themselves.  From Monday’s Washington Post:

Mohamud Said Omar, 44, is suspected of providing money to the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab that was used to buy guns. Around 20 youths of Somali descent are believed to have traveled to Somalia from Minnesota since 2007 to help the group, which the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida.

Omar’s lawyers say he never intended to help terrorists.

“In any case Omar denies that he has ever been involved in any way whatsoever with the financing of terrorism,” his lawyer Bart Stapert said.

Omar has been held in a high-security Dutch prison since his arrest at the request of the U.S. government in November. He has residency in the U.S. but had been living in a center for would-be asylum seekers in the Netherlands since December 2008, apparently before he was a suspect.

A total of 14 people have been charged in the ongoing U.S. federal investigation into the travels of as many as 20 young men who went to Somalia to fight over a period of two years starting in 2007. They face a variety of accusations from recruiting and raising funds for the trips, to engaging in terrorist acts in Somalia and perjury.

Omar was the only one in the Netherlands.

According to his extradition request, U.S. officials plan to charge Omar with providing or conspiring to provide “material support to a foreign terrorist organization,” and “conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure.”

Stapert argued that the specific acts Omar is said to have committed – including gathering money in the U.S., taking youths to the airport, and speaking and meeting with people who had been to Somalia – would not be considered crimes in the Netherlands (emphasis mine).

Supreme Court to judge “material support” of terrorism

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today in Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, a case that assesses the constitutionality of banning material support to foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).

Counterterrorism Blog has linked to a helpful and detailed report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) on the case.  As they point out, in enacting 18 U.S.C. § 2339B against material support, Congress intended to make FTO’s “radioactive” by allowing no support—whether that support comes in the form of money, safe houses, weapons, or personnel.

But some people just can’t take “no” for an answer, including supporters of the Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.  The PKK is the group that likes using IEDs to kill Turkish civilians periodically.

“Material support” is a major category of successful legal prosecutions of terrorist acts.  IPT found that 23 percent of all terrorism cases involve material support.

Chart by The Investigative Project for Terrorism