(I haven’t seen it all yet, but it starts out really well)
H/T M
Category Archives: Al Shabab
The Al-Shabaab Connection
From Gates of Vienna:
The day after last month’s explosion and fire at 514 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis, an FBI agent named Greg Boosalis reassured Minnesotans that there was no evidence of terrorist activity in connection with the devastating explosion.
I wondered at the time — and still wonder — how the FBI could be so certain less than forty-eight hours after the blast that no terrorism was involved. The immediate neighborhood of the demolished building is a known hotbed of terrorist activity, and is especially notorious for the recruitment of mujahideen and funds for the jihad being waged by al-Shabaab in Somalia.
As it turns out, the FBI was absolutely derelict in ruling out a terrorist connection with 514 Cedar Avenue South. Our Minnesota correspondent Henrietta has examined property and business license records for the city of Minneapolis, and found a clear trail leading from the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque to the destroyed building, and from there to a pair of convicted money-launderers for al-Shabaab.
The Al-Shabaab Connection
by Henrietta
A little sleuthing has revealed some interesting facts regarding the Cedar-Riverside property that exploded and burned on January 1, 2014 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Kenyan “jihad convention”
Muslim propaganda on the above event
H/T M
Al Shabaab: US Forces Abort Somalia Terror Raid
Sky News:
(Video at source)
US special forces have aborted a mission to capture an al Shabaab leader in Somalia after coming under heavy attack.
Their target was Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, also known as Ahmed Godane, who claimed responsibility for last month’s Nairobi shopping mall massacre that killed at least 67 people, according to a Somali intelligence official.
A Navy Seal team staged a pre-dawn raid on a house in the southern town of Barawa after swimming ashore before the al Qaeda-linked militants rose for morning prayers.
H/T DP111
Four jailed in Minnesota over al-Shabab recruitment
H/T Wrath of Khan
BBC:
Prosecutors said the defendants had broken both the law and the hearts of family members
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories
Four men have been given prison sentences in the US state of Minnesota in connection with the recruitment of fighters for a Somali militant group.
Abdifatah Isse, Salah Ahmed and Ahmed Mahamud were jailed for three years by a federal judge after pleading guilty to providing material support to al-Shabab, a designated terrorist group.
Omer Mohamed was given 12 years for conspiracy to provide material support.
Ex-York U student may have been involved in Somalia attack
Wow between the four Ontario people and this, clearly the problem in the world is Canadians!
H/T Taffy in Canada.
Toronto Star:
Somali and Canadian security forces are probing whether a former York University student was part of a team of suicide bombers who attacked Mogadishu court.
FEISAL OMAR / REUTERS
A Somali woman runs to safety near the scene of a blast in Mogadishu April 14, 2013. Two car bombs exploded outside the law courts and gunmen stormed the building.
By: Michelle Shephard National Security Reporter, Published on Sun Apr 14 2013
Somali and Canadian security forces are probing whether a former York University student was part of a team of suicide bombers who attacked Mogadishu on Sunday, shattering the capital’s calm and killing and injuring dozens.
Intelligence, police and government sources in Mogadishu and Ottawa told the Star that they were investigating reports that Mahad Ali Dhore was one of the nine Al Shabab militants who stormed the capital’s courthouse Sunday as part of the well-co-ordinated attack, which included a separate car bomb targeting Turkish aid workers.
‘The cross could not save him from the sword’: Gloating Somali Islamists post pictures on Twitter of dead French soldier who was killed trying to save hostage
H/T EDL Buck:
Daily Mail:
- Two soldiers presumed dead after failed rescue mission in south Somalia
- Militant group al-Shabab posted three photos on Twitter of ‘dead soldier’
- Tweets taunted Christianity and French president Francois Hollande
- Mission was to save French intelligence officer Denis Allex held hostage
By Sara Malm
PUBLISHED: 17:07 GMT, 14 January 2013 | UPDATED: 19:53 GMT, 14 January 2013
Somali militants with links to al-Qaeda today posted sickening photographs of what they claim is a French soldier killed in Saturday’s failed rescue mission of a fellow countryman held hostage.
Three pictures posted on Twitter show a white man wearing military pants and a blood-soaked shirt surrounded by three guns, ammunition clips and protective gear.
Militant Islamist group al-Shabab taunt the dead man’s religion in their posts writing ‘A return of the crusades, but the cross could not save him from the sword,’ and asking president Francois Hollande if it was ‘worth it’.
Gruesome: Somali militia al-Shabab tweeted this picture, which we have pixilated out of decency, and two more of what they says is a soldier killed in attempt to free a French intelligence officer held hostage
The soldier was killed during a failed military raid to rescue a French intelligence officer who had been held by al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-affiliated militant group that controls much of southern Somalia, since July 2009.
Click to continue:
A Trail of Bullet Casings Leads From Africa’s Wars Back to Iran
According to people I know who have spent much time in Afghanistan, many of the problems there are fueled and even created from Tehran. It would appear that Iranian state machinery is funding and supplying many of the worlds bloody and oppressive groups and slaughters.
H/T Shabnam
From the New York Times.
<nyt_headline version=”1.0″ type=” “>
Via Conflict Armament Research
Iranian-made cartridges recovered from the northern Ivory Coast, of a type found in several African countries.
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: January 11, 2013 142 Comments
The first clues appeared in Kenya, Uganda and what is now South Sudan. A British arms researcher surveying ammunition used by government forces and civilian militias in 2006 found Kalashnikov rifle cartridges he had not seen before. The ammunition bore no factory code, suggesting that its manufacturer hoped to avoid detection.
Conflict Armament Research
Views of a cartridge that was traced to its manufacture in Iran, and, at bottom, the projectile contained in the cartridge.
Within two years other researchers were finding identical cartridges circulating through the ethnic violence in Darfur. Similar ammunition then turned up in 2009 in a stadium in Conakry, Guinea, where soldiers had fired on antigovernment protesters, killing more than 150.
Click to continue:
Minibus ‘hit by grenade’ in Kenya’s capital Nairobi
BBC:
Recent attacks in Nairobi and Mombasa have been blamed on Somali militantsContinue reading the main story
Related Stories
A blast has killed at least six people on a crowded minibus passing through a suburb of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, that has a large Somali population.
A grenade was thrown into the vehicle in the Eastleigh area, police said, ripping the roof and sides off the bus.
Somali guilty on all 5 counts of assisting Muslim terror
Muslim ‘student’ in the US found ‘guilty on all 5 counts’ and operating a “terror pipeline”
Minnesota mohammadan convicted of aiding Somalia terror group
USA in support of african-led forces for Mali
An original translation by Michael Laudahn
from VG.No
TRAINING: A mali soldier instructing new recruits at a training camp of the FNL movement, the liberation movement for northern Mali.
The US will support ‘well planned and equipped african-led forces’ that can assist in forcing islamists out of northern Mail, according to american government agencies.
‘Sooner or later, military action will become necessary to force the al Qaida-related rebels of the islamic Maghreb out of northern Mali’, says american top diplomat Johnnie Carson. He emphasises, however, that such forces must be under the Mali army’s command, and that Mali’s neighbouring countries must agree to the formation of these forces.
Last week, Mali, France and several west-african countries argued for the establishment of african-led forces, which can support Mali authorities to chase the islamist rebels from the country’s northern parts, which they assumed control of in march.
A group of younger officers seized the power in the country and overthrew president Amadou Touré, protesting the fact that the official army got too few ressources to combat islamists in the northern parts of the country. Paradoxically enough, this coup led to the islamists taking over larger parts of northern Mali, where they have introduced a strict sharia regime.
Islamists are being kicked out of Somalia. The West can learn from this
Telegraph.UK
By David Blair World Last updated: October 1st, 2012
On the retreat: Somalian Islamists
Step by step, al-Shabaab is being rolled back in Somalia. The al-Qaeda affiliate appears to have been compelled to abandon Kismayo, the last big town under its control. That matters a lot because Kismayo is also a significant port and the extremists were making plenty of money by shipping charcoal and other goods out and weapons in. If they have lost Kismayo, they will have been deprived of perhaps their most important source of revenue.
Only a year ago, al-Shabaab controlled almost all of southern Somalia including most of Mogadishu. When I visited last December, they were still clinging to some enclaves of the capital. Today, they have been kicked out of Mogadishu altogether and reduced to a largely rural insurgency.
One dead, scores hurt in Nairobi church grenade attack
H/T Michael Laudahn
Capital FM Kenya
Posted by BERNARD MOMANYI on September 30, 2012
The church lies next to the Eastleigh quarter, nicknamed “little Mogadishu”
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 30 – A grenade attack killed one child and wounded nine others in a Nairobi church on Sunday, a day after Islamist fighters abandoned their last bastion in neighbouring Somalia in the face of an assault by Kenyan and other troops.
The blast occurred during a service for young children at the Anglican St. Polycarp church, which lies in Pangani on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital.
Blood-stained children’s jackets and shoes lay scattered on the floor, surrounded by remnants of metal walls that were broken and twisted by the force of the explosion.
“One child has died and three others have been seriously injured,” Nairobi police chief Moses Nyakwama said. “We suspect it was a grenade.”
A church official said nine children had been wounded.
“The children who attend this service are aged between six and 10… we usually divide them according to their ages,” said Livingstone Muiruri. “They had just started the morning session when the explosion occurred.”
“We were in the main church so we all ran there to assist the kids,” he said. “We have nine children admitted to hospital.”
Janet Wanja was just entering the church when the blast shook the building.
“I heard a loud explosion and then heard kids screaming,” she said. “I am traumatised by what I saw, kids with injuries and blood all over. “Why are they attacking the church?”
Police were also investigating the possibility that the blast was a result of a bomb that had been placed in the building earlier, Haed of Police Operations in Nairobi, Wilfred Mbithi said.
The church lies next to the Eastleigh quarter, nicknamed “little Mogadishu” because most residents are either Somali refugees or Kenyans of Somali origin.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a string of grenade attacks, shootings and bomb blasts that have rocked Kenya since it sent troops into southern Somalia in October 2011 to crush bases of Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab fighters, who have vowed revenge.
The Kenyan intervention came in retalitation for suspected Shabaab attacks on its soil
Somali and Kenyan troops squeeze al Shabab from the port city of Kismayo – the Islamist group’s most important strategic asset.
H/T Softly Bob
Sky.Com
Somali and Kenyan troops squeeze al Shabab from the port city of Kismayo – the Islamist group’s most important strategic asset.
Members of al Shabab who surrendered in Mogadishu on September 24By Sam Kiley, Defence and Security Editor
Somalia’s violent Islamist movement has been driven out of its headquarters in the southern port city of Kismayo.
It was the first amphibious assault by African troops since independence in the 1960s.
A Kenyan task force bombarded Kismayo then landed troops from seven ships, locals said. They then battled the al Shabab which rushed troops to the city’s port and its beaches three miles to the north.
Joined by Somali government troops, the Kenyans squeezed al Shabab from the north and with an attack from the south – which had followed months of painstaking operations – Kenyan forces inched forward against the Islamists, who claim allegiance to al Qaeda.