Another al-Qaida Mohammed?

The lead story in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune is the unsealing of a Minnesota federal district court indictment against Mohammed Warsame. Warsame is a resident of Minneapolis by way of Canada and Somalia. He was first arrested and detained last month as a material witness. Yesterday’s indictment charged Warsame with conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida from at least March 2000 through Dec. 8, 2003, the day he was arrested in Minneapolis by the FBI.
Unfortunately, the Warsame indictment is not available online. It is not possible to ascertain from the Star Tribune story the source of the original suspicions regarding Warsame, though according to an affidavit filed in the case Warsame has admitted traveling to an al-Qaida training camp in 2000 and 2001.
The Star Tribune reports that law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in December described Warsame as knowledgeable about accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui’s activities in an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. The indictment released Wednesday made no reference to Moussaoui, who was arrested in Eagan, Minnesota shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks and is accused of training at Al-Qaida’s Khalden Camp in April 1998.
The Star Tribune story also carries the usual comments of relatives and allies. The Star Tribune reports that Abdullah Warsame, who said Mohammed calls him uncle (is it too difficult to establish the actual relationship between them, if any?), said that Mohammed never spoke of training camps or al-Qaida. This does not exactly fall into the category of useful information.
Abdullah Warsame also assured the Star Tribune that Warsame “is not a political person. I have a very strong feeling that when everything is over, the government will find that he is totally innocent.” Well, thanks, but I guess the problem is that these al-Qaida types tend to be…religious rather than political, and the Star Tribune reported Warsame’s Islamic activities in Canada last month. Uncle Abdullah to the contrary notwithstanding, I have a strong feeling that when everything is over, the government will find that he is guilty as charged.
The Twin Cities has a substantial Somali population, perhaps the largest Somali population in the United States. We await the emergence of a Somali community spokesman expressing concern for the United States and anger at the enemies of America in their midst.