Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame is the 10th member of Minnesota’s Somali-American community charged with conspiring to travel to Syria to join and fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. It charges him with conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
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According to the complaint and documents filed in court, in April 2015, Warsame actively encouraged Omar and other co-conspirators to travel to Syria through Mexico, but did not plan to join their group because he was planning to travel with his family to East Africa. Nine of those men, not including Warsame, have so far been charged.
Warsame was one of a group of young men who assembled at a mosque to play basketball and see videos glorifying violence by extremists, the 16-page charge says.
Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, 20, who lives in Eagan and said he works as a $13-an-hour security guard for Securitas, didn’t enter a plea and provided mostly yes and no answers in steady, unaccented English as U.S. District Judge Michael Davis reviewed his Miranda rights.
A warrant issued for Warsame’s arrest Wednesday said Warsame was appointed emir, or leader, of the group in the spring of 2014 after the previous leader made his own attempts to leave for Syria.
The complaint didn’t say what Warsame had done since April, along with a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Minneapolis could not be reached for comment late on Wednesday.
Two days after the Macy’s shopping expedition, one of the friends – Abdi Nur – boarded a flight at Twin Cities worldwide and flew to Turkey, and is now believed to be fighting for ISIS.
Warsame would probably have tried to leave at that time as well, according to the complaint, but his application for a passport was denied.
Shortly after that conversation, Nur successfully traveled to Syria, where he joined ISIL, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Since 2007, USA prosecutors say, dozens of people from Minnesota, many young Somali-American men among them, have travelled or attempted to travel overseas to support Islamic State or al Shabaab, a Somalia-based militant group. He said he’d go first to Somalia to join the terror organization Al-Shabab, expecting that it would join forces with ISIL. Authorities say the 9th suspect is in Syria. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
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