Ex-Mayo Clinic employee charged with attempting to provide ISIS support
A former medical coordinator for Mayo Clinic was arrested at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Thursday while trying to get to Syria to fight “on the front line” of ISIS.
The FBI arrested 28-year-old Muhammad Masood after he checked in for his flight to Los Angeles. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has charged Masood with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, including wanting to serve as a fighter and combat medic and talking of his desire to enact a lone wolf-style attack. Masood made his first appearance in court Thursday.
Masood is a licensed medical doctor in Pakistan working in the United States on an H-1B Visa for the past two years in the Mayo Clinic Department of Cardiovascular Diseases. In a statement Thursday, Mayo Clinic communications manager Ginger Plumbo said that Masood was not a Mayo Clinic employee at the time of his arrest. It is unclear when his employment ended.
From January to March, Masood made several statements pledging his allegiance to ISIS and its leader, according to charges.
“i want to fight on the front line as well as help the wounded brothers,” he said over an encrypted social media app to confidential informant sources, according to charges. “as i doctor i want to help mujahedeen [sic] on the ground,” he wrote. According to charges, “mujahedeen” refers to those engaged in jihad.
On Feb. 19, Masood traveled to Bloomington to meet with a confidential informant he believed would help him join ISIS. They met in the parking lot of a shopping mall and drove to a nearby hotel. They patched in another informant via video conference, who Masood believed to be an overseas commander vetting him.
Left out of the Star Tribune story is this line from an AP story:
He explained that he wanted to make the trip because he “hates smiling at the passing kuffar just to not make them suspicios.” The affidavit said kuffar is an Arabic term meaning nonbeliever or non-Muslim.
Brentwood woman sentenced to 13 years in prison for aiding ISIS
A Brentwood woman was sentenced Friday to 13 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to a charge of providing more than $150,000 in financial support to the ISIS terrorist organization.
Zoobia Shahnaz, 29, was in addition sentenced to 10 years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in Central Islip.
Judge Joanna Seybert said when she handed down the stiff sentence that the defendant could have found a “more peaceable” organization to work with if she really wanted to help refugees. BTW, I could not find a photo of Shahnaz so had to settle for the judge.
Shahnaz, a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan and a lab technician at a Manhattan hospital, obtained more than $85,000 of the money through a number of fraud schemes and passed the funds on to ISIS in a further complex manner, according to officials.
She was arrested in July 2017 at Kennedy Airport while attempting to board a flight to Turkey, where she intended to illegally enter Syria to join ISIS, officials have said.
Eastern District federal prosecutor Artie McConnell argued for a stiff sentence saying ISIS could have used that money to create massive destruction and death, noting that terrorist attacks around the world have been perpetrated with devices whose ingredients cost as little as $600.
Defense attorney Steven Zissou said before and after the sentencing that his client’s “only goal was to help the suffering of Syrian refugees,” after she had witnessed the carnage in Syria at refugee camps where she had volunteered.
Zissou said the average sentence of someone in his client’s position had been 11 years, with as little 4 years.
Seybert said she was leery of imposing a low sentence, saying that Shahnaz was a highly intelligent person who implemented a complex scheme. The judge noted the defendant came from a loving family and could have worked for much more peaceable organizations.
[….]
“Today, the defendant learned the consequences of seeking to join ISIS and funneling thousands of dollars into the terrorist organization’s coffers,” stated Eastern District U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue. “There is no higher priority of the Department of Justice and this Office than protecting our country from those who support violent, hate-filled terrorist organizations.”
In March of 2009I wentWashingtonfor a Senate Homeland Security hearing.
The subject was Somali Islamic radicalization in Minnesota.
The committee was hearing from Robert Mueller’s FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center, and from two men, Minnesota Somalis who feared for the future of young Somalis being lured back to Africa by al-Shabaab which ultimately joined with al Qaeda to become a powerful terror network.
Birds of a feather! Presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Tammy Baldwin, and Rep. Ilhan Omar having a laugh.
Shame on our terrorism ‘experts.’
They downplayed the disappearance of at least twenty young Somali youths even as Osman Ahmed and Abdirahman Mukhtar had traveled to Washington (putting themselves in danger at home) to try to alert the committee and America to the radicalization going on in mosques in the state Senator Amy Klobuchar represents.
Normally when constituents testify on the Hill a Member of Congress or Senator from the state the constituents are from at least stops in at the hearing.
Senator Amy Klobuchar never showed her face that day. Why?
A year ago this month I told readers here at ‘Frauds and Crooks’about the Senator’s absence.
LOL! The Fox story came ten years after that hearing and twelve years after the Somali youths began leaving the US to get training as jihadists!
Fox News Attempts to Explain why Minneapolis Somalis became Jihadists
Okay, okay, I’m at least thankful that a national cable news outlet is finally getting around to the US Somali refugee radicalization problem that has been going on for at least twelve years, but I want to scream about how long it takes for the national media to catch up with serious issues like this one.
And, I guess we should be thankful that Ilhan Omar was elected to Congress, because her words and actions have become a focal point (a news hook) for stories like this one.
I honestly think she does us a great service by being in Congress—let her keep talking!
I can’t and won’t write a book here, but everyone should take time to read the Fox story, and to read about my trip to Washington in 2009 when I attended a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the radicalization of Minnesota Somalis.
You will see that the FBI brushed off the idea of any Islamic connection and spokesmen testifying were fixated on their main point—the poor disenfranchised refugee “youths” were going back to defend Somalia from Ethiopian aggression (Move along, nothing to see about a broader reason for jihad recruitment).
Who headed the FBI in 2009? Robert Mueller.
And, by the way, Senator Amy Klobuchar never set foot into that hearing room that day even though she had constituents testifying!
Not a surprise that Klobuchar wants nothing to do with any suggestion that her Somali voters could be terrorists or have a radical agenda.
Last night I had a look at CAIR’s twitter feed (you should all do that from time to time). It was very illuminating. They have been hollering for days about a slowdown in movement across the Washington State/Canada border due to Border Patrol doing a little extra checking of those who might pose harm to America.
By the way, in case CAIR and you have forgotten, the President’s travel ban is still in place and Iran is on the list, so checking Iranians right now is doubly important.
(I’ll have more to say about the travel ban at RRWin light of John Binder’sBreitbart postyesterday about how we are still taking refugees from banned countries.)
Here is one of CAIR’s featured outrage stories by their pals at Vox:
Nearly 200 Iranian Americans were detained at the US-Canada border
In recent days, as many as 200 people of Iranian descent, some of them US citizens, have been detained at the US-Canada border and questioned about their political views, family members, and work histories.
About 60 individuals, including American and Canadian citizens, were held for questioning about their “political views and allegiances” at the Canadian border in Blaine, Washington, on Saturday, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of Muslims in the US.
CAIR has been on twitter for ten years and has 51K followers. This tweet has been up for 22 hours with only 6 retweets. Apparently few care what CAIR is saying.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confiscated their passports and held some of them waiting rooms for as long as 10 hours, refusing to grant them entry to the US, according to CAIR.
By Monday, as many as 140 more people of Iranian descent had been detained at the border. They were repeatedly asked about their birthplaces, family members, schooling, and work histories.
But CBP also told Vox it’s operating with an “enhanced posture at its ports of entry to safeguard our national security” based on current threats to the US — which, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), could include an Iran-backed terrorist attack.
CBP agents have broad legal authority to detain and question individuals at ports of entry, but not to conduct interrogations for hours without cause.
[….]
Though Saturday’s detentions appeared to be a reaction to the recent escalation of tensions between the US and Iran, the administration had already made it difficult for Iranians to enter the US under President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which also affects nationals of six other countries deemed to be security threats.
[….]
In a statement, CAIR said that according to one of its sources at CBP, DHS had directed CBP officials to report and detain anyone of Iranian heritage attempting to enter the US if they were found to be “suspicious or adversarial, regardless of citizenship status.”
“These reports are extremely troubling and potentially constitute illegal detentions of United States citizens,” Masih Fouladi, executive director of CAIR’s Washington chapter, said.
Washington’s Democrat Governor Inslee joined CAIR in its criticism. He apparently is fine and dandy with unhindered traffic in and out of his state.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee called CBP’s denial of the detentions “simply not credible.”
“These were detentions, and that is unacceptable,” Inslee said in a statement. “By all accounts, this is detention, regardless of whether the waiting area has bars on the windows.”
We should all breath a sigh of relief to know that extra scrutiny is happening at our borderin light of recent fears that Iranians would exact revenge on us.
Former Secret Service, CIA agent issues warning: Prepare for Iran sleeper cells to strike rural America
IRAN TENSIONS COME TO A BOILING POINT: IS MAIN STREET READY?
In the wake of growing tensions in the Middle East, the United States has made a deliberate strike against the most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.
The killing of Iran’s Quds Force General, Qassem Soleimani, has sparked much debate across the aisle of whether or not this action is an act of war by President Trump.
Regardless of where you stand, the act of terrorism has increased for months before the US response. The question is, is America ready for attacks in the homeland?
As a country, we have been blinded by the possibility of a concentrated attack on US soil and many Americans, including our politicians, have forgotten the grim reality of 9/11 and not given our adversaries the respect they deserve.
We have allowed our guard to be lowered with debates of human rights for open borders, disregarding threats on social media and handcuffing the hands of our law enforcement officers to protect and serve.
Art Del Cueto, the Vice President of the National Border Patrol Union and President of the Arizona Border Patrol Union, touched on it this week:
“We need to take securing our nation’s borders very serious. With the huge rise in individuals claiming asylum, we truthfully don’t know enough about those individuals past, much less their true intentions. Drug cartels are the ones that control our southern borders and they do not care about human lives, it’s all about the money,” he said.
Del Cueto rightfully pointed out that the border opens us up to terrorists walking right into America.
Better safe than sorry, it’s important that you pay attention to your surroundings in the days, weeks and months ahead. And, report to local authorities anything that causes you concern as you go about your daily lives.
P.S. We are still bringing in Muslim refugees (in case you thought that had been stopped). And, in what can only be described as insane, we bring almost equal numbers of Shiites and Sunnis, I guess so they can continue their centuries-old wars right here on American soil. See my post today at RRW.
