Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Islamist terrorists crossing the border,

while the Obama administration sues Arizona for enforcing Federal immigration law:
Patrick Poole writes,
DOJ Memo Confirms Terrorists Have Crossed the Border
PJM reveals a court filing showing that federal prosecutors have admitted a terror threat involving an Al-Shabaab human smuggler who claimed asylum. (h/t Instapundit).
While many Latin American observers have been writing about this issue, what is significant is that this time the Department of Justice is documenting it a court filing in the pending sentencing of convicted Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane in a San Antonio federal court:

In this court filing, provided exclusively here at Pajamas Media, prosecutors admit that Dhakane, who ran a human smuggling ring based in Brazil for the Somali Al-Shabaab terrorist group, transported “violent jihadists” into the country. He stated that “he believed they would fight against the U.S. if the jihad moved from overseas locations to the U.S. mainland.” (p. 7)
…
Dhakane was charged in March 2010 with lying about his terror ties when he applied for asylum in 2008, specifically omitting information that he had worked for two specially designated global terrorist entities (SDGT). He pleaded guilty earlier this year to lying to the FBI and awaits sentencing next month. Rather than trying him on terror charges, federal prosecutors are asking for terror enhancements on the sentence for lying to the FBI.

Poole, who is scheduled to testify today before the Arizona House Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee on the topic of “Cross-border Terror Threats and Islamic Radicalization in Arizona,” correctly points out

This is far from the first time that Islamic terrorists are known to have attempted to enter the U.S, or actually succeeded. Just last year Homeland Security authorities put out an alert concerning a group of terror-tied Somalis who were attempting to enter the country through Mexico. Then last May anotherterror alert was issued for a known Al-Shabaab official, Mohamed Ali, who was suspected of trying to cross the border from Mexico. And in February 2010, a Virginia convert to Islam who was in contact with Al-Shabaab officials, Anthony Joseph Tracy, was charged for his role in an international smuggling ring that brought at least 200 Somalis into the U.S. on Cuban travel documents.

Other terrorist operatives are known to have successfully crossed the border:

  • In February 2001, Mahmoud Kourani crossed the border from Tijuana in the trunk of a car, eventually settling in Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani, who federal prosecutors claimed had received training in weapons, intelligence, and spy craft in Iran, bribed a Mexican embassy official in Beirut to obtain a visa. Kourani’s brother is known to be Hezbollah’s security chief in southern Lebanon.
  • In December 2002, Salim Boughader was arrested for smuggling 200 Lebanese, including Hezbollah operatives, across the border. Boughader had previously worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV satellite network.
  • In July 2004, Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed was arrested at a Texas airport boarding a flight to New York. According to the Washington Post, she was connected to a Pakistani terrorist group. Believed to be ferrying instructions to U.S.-based al-Qaeda operatives, authorities issued a terror alert for Washington D.C., New York, and New Jersey.
  • In January 2005, two Hamas operatives, Mahmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh, were arrested as part of a criminal enterprise in Los Angeles. Both had entered the U.S. after paying a smuggler $10,000 each to take them across the border.
  • Rep. John Culberson said in November 2005 that an Iraqi al-Qaeda operative on the terror watch list was captured living near the Mexico-Texas border.

At least they weren’t named Perez.

Long-term regular readers of this blog know that I have been asserting that border security is a national security issue.

When will the Obama administration realize that?

UPDATE
Welcome, The Other McCaine readers!

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CNN now doing tabloid newscasts: “Son ’stupid kid,’ not a terrorist”

Those of us who watch Spanish-language media are used to seeing reports where the gansta/punk/hardened criminal commits a heinous crime and the reporter never fails to include an interview with the perpetrator’s crying mom, who never fails to say he couldn’t have done it because, “he’s such a good son.”

Well, CNN is going one better. Now they interviewed the mom of Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, New Jersey, who got busted on his way to join Somali jihadists. Mo’s mom apparently didn’t say much about what a good son he is, but she sure attested to his stupidity – and his anger management issues:

“Anything makes him angry. But he’s not a terrorist; he’s a stupid kid,” Nadia Alessa said of her U.S.-born son, Mahmood.


Mom, being smarter, warned him about undercover agents that may have been on his case,

“Since I saw him, I warned my son and Carlos,” Nadia Alessa said. “But my son say ‘Always you say about my friends they are undercover.’ “

Nice mom, isn’t she? She doesn’t seem to have been too bothered as to whether Mo was a jihadist, she was just concerned as to whether undercover FBI agents were after him.

Robert Spencer speculates on whether this is a new twist on the insanity defense:

Now there’s a twist on the “Decent Fellows” canard. One might call it a variation on the oft-used “insanity” defense. Of course, it stands to reason she’ll make any excuse to believe, or at least to make others believe, that this has nothing to do with Islam.

And few will consider the chance that he’s actually quite crafty, or perhaps, that he’s both a jihadist and dumber than a bag of hammers as well. The important thing is, he’s a jihadist.

And mom wasn’t worried about that?

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Whipped for a bra

Islamist savagery, this time in Somalia:
Somali Women Whipped for Wearing Bras

Somalia’s hardline Islamist group al Shabaab is cracking down on residents who do not follow a strict form of Sharia Islamic law, now publicly whipping women who wear bras, the Times of India reported.

Residents tell the paper that gunmen have been gathering women in Mogadishu who are perceived to have firm busts. These women are then publicly whipped by masked men as punishment for what Islamist leaders call deception.

After the public whippings, the women are forced to remove their bras and shake their breasts, the Times reported.

“Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,” a resident, Halima, told the Times of India. Her daughters were whipped for wearing bras.

“They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat,” she said.

The insurgent group recently amputated a foot and a hand from two young men accused of robbery. Al Shabaab has also banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer.

Religion of peace, you say?

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