Hiiraan Online

Wednesday December 9, 2015

The FBI is investigating a Twin Cities man who faces federal terrorism charges to see if he was in contact with the couple involved in last week's California terror attack before he recently surrendered to Somali authorities.

Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan surrendered to the Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency in Mogadishu a month ago, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Monday. Any communication with San Bernardino, Calif., shooters Tashfeen Malik or Syed Rizwan Farook would have occurred before then.

The Los Angeles Times reported that "the FBI has become increasingly 'intrigued with' Hassan, who became a recruiter for the Islamic State. The agency is trying to determine whether he and Farook were in any contact before last week's attack."

Hassan, who went by the nickname Miski when he lived in Minneapolis, was just 17 and a high school senior when he left the U.S. to join al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia, in August 2008. But more recently, Hassan had become a vocal supporter of the Islamic State group, posting jihadist rhetoric online.

Tweeting under the name "Mujahid Miski," Hassan urged his Twitter followers to carry out acts of violence in the U.S. He also commended attacks elsewhere and used protests of police activity in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore to try to recruit others to the jihadist cause.

Most notably, Hassan was among those urging an attack on a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, in May.

Sources in the San Bernardino investigation have told the Los Angeles Times that they are looking into whether Farook made connections on the Internet to Islamic terrorist figures.

FBI officials have said that Farook had "some contact" with someone known to the FBI in the U.S. and also reached out digitally to at least two members of foreign terror groups, including one in Somalia, said a federal law enforcement official who is unauthorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Hassan, who was born in Somalia, is a legal resident of the U.S. but is not an American citizen.

Meanwhile, an American who had been fighting with al-Shabaab also left the al-Shabaab rebels and was arrested by Somalia's security forces on Monday. Abdimalik Jones, who said he is from San Diego, was arrested in the southern port of Barawe, said African Union spokesman Col. Paul Njuguna.

The defections of the two fighters from Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels highlight tensions within al-Shabaab over whether it should remain affiliated with al-Qaida or switch allegiance to the Islamic State, an al-Shabaab commander said Tuesday.

Foreign fighters are being alienated and feel trapped in Somalia over suspicions that they are plotting to switch allegiance to the Islamic State group fighting in Syria and Iraq, Abu Mohammed, a military commander with Al-Shabaab, told the Associated Press. The "ambitions" by some foreign fighters in al-Shabaab to join the Islamic State had led to them to be isolated within the Somali group and even face death at the hands of their erstwhile comrades-in-arms.

Jones claimed he fled al-Shabaab because of rifts within the group, said an official with Somali security forces who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

Hassan surrendered to Somalia's federal government on Nov. 6, the State Department said.

State Department spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala said Hassan is in the custody of the Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency in Mogadishu. She said the U.S. is discussing the case with the Somali Federal Government, but noted that the U.S. does not have an extradition agreement with Somalia.

In a phone interview Tuesday with Voice of America, Hassan said he has no intention of returning to the United States.

"Any crimes that I have committed, if there is any, it is done over here in Somalia," he told Voice of America. "If I am to be going to court, it is going to be in Somalia not in America."

Hassan, who was speaking from prison, said he wasn't tied to the Islamic State group.

"I am not part of ISIS and I have nothing to do with any other group or any other jihadi movement," he said.

Hassan said he joined al-Shabaab to help defend against the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia, but he left the group in 2013 "because of the oppression that they are doing on the people, the way they are killing people, and the imprisonment of innocent people and the torture without no evidence at all."

He said that last month al-Shabaab members raided his home and terrorized his family, Voice of America reported. He said that he escaped but was later arrested by government forces.

The defections of Hassan and Jones show tensions within al-Shabaab, according to Mohammed.

"Some mujahedeen fighters are now preferring to fall into the enemy's hands instead of meeting death in the hands of brothers," Mohammed said, adding that the friction over ISIS "is messing everything up here."

This report includes information from the Forum News Service, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press.