Minnesota man accused of attempting to join the Islamic State group
A Minneapolis man who allegedly expressed admiration for the truck attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people has been accused of trying to join the Islamic State group, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan, 22, made his first court appearance on a charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
A 34-page complaint details the extensive lengths Hassan went to get to Somalia and fight with ISIS from social media posts to failed attempts to fly there.
Hassan was born in Kenya and lived in Texas before moving to Minnesota in 2023.
The criminal complaint against Hassan details several social posts dating back to May up until last week. That's when Investigators say Hassan posted a video of this knife on his lap.
On Wednesday, FBI agents say they observed Hassan driving while holding a black ISIS flag. He was arrested Thursday.
The charging documents also say police in New York notified the FBI last May that Hassan had made social media posts in support of the Somali group al-Shabab. An affidavit from an agent says investigators spotted al-Shabab and ISIS propaganda videos on his TikTok and Facebook accounts. It also alleges that he exchanged messages with a Facebook account that encourages Somali-speaking individuals to travel and fight on behalf of the Islamic State group.
FBI agents were watching when Hassan went to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Dec. 13, authorities say. He allegedly tried to check in for a flight to Somalia but left after an airline employee told him he lacked required travel documents.
He allegedly tried again on Dec. 29. Agents saw him board a flight to Chicago, where Customs and Border Protection officers interviewed him extensively before his scheduled flight to Ethiopia but did not detain him. He missed the flight and returned to Minneapolis, the affidavit says.
Hassan admitted in an interview that he started consuming ISIS propaganda after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Jaylani Hussein with the Council on American-Islamic Relations Minnesota says the community has made tremendous strides to reverse radicalization in the state.
In 2016, nine Minnesota men were sentenced on federal charges of conspiring to join the Islamic State group.
"The community has made significant gains, and this almost becomes a non-issue in Minnesota when, 10 years ago, it was a significant concern," Hussein said.
Hussein says the community has gained a lot of ground reversing radicalization, but the fight against radicalization is far from over.
"This is an important issue for our community. I just want to make sure Minnesotans know that we've made significant gains [and] those gains are the reason why we haven't really heard of this type of case," Hussein said.
Hassan is due back in court on Wednesday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Manhunt intensifies in US after lawmaker killed, another wounded
Police and FBI agents waged a huge manhunt Sunday for a gunman who killed a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota in what officials called a politically motivated attack. As the search stretched into its second day, police appeared to close in on the shooter, finding a car described as related to him, but not the man himself. America reeled from its latest spasm of political violence as lawmakers called for a return to civility in political discourse that has been overheated and angry for years. Authorities searched for a man identified as Vance Boelter, 57, who also allegedly shot and wounded another lawmaker and his wife early Saturday in the northern state bordering Canada. Officials said Boelter impersonated a police officer as he came to the homes of these couples near Minneapolis and shot them, and that officers found a manifesto and a list of other lawmakers and potential targets in his car. Boelter fled on foot after exchanging gunfire with officers after the second shooting. On Sunday officers located another car related to Boelter in a rural area about a 90-minute drive west of Minneapolis, the Sibley County Sheriff's Office told AFP. Residents were warned of the find and agents are scouring the area, the office said without explaining how the vehicle is related to the suspect. Officials have issued security alerts in South Dakota and other states as the hunt proceeds, US Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said Sunday as she mourned her slain friend, Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman. "I am concerned about all our political leaders, political organizations," she said. "It was politically motivated, and there clearly was some throughline with abortion because of the groups that were on the list, and other things that I've heard were in this manifesto. So that was one of his motivations." As speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2019 to January 2025, Hortman was committed to legislation that protected reproductive rights in the state, local media reported. - 'Bring the tone down' - America is bitterly divided politically as President Donald Trump embarks on his second term and routinely insults his opponents. Political violence is becoming more and more common. Trump himself survived an assassination attempt last year. An assailant with a hammer attacked the husband of then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022. And Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's home was set on fire this year. "We need to bring the tone down," Klobuchar said on CNN. US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, himself attacked by a neighbor in 2017, told NBC "nothing brings us together more than, you know, mourning for somebody else who's in political life, Republican or Democrats." On Saturday the FBI released a photo that appears to show Boelter wearing a mask as he stands outside the home of one of the lawmakers. It is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. The shootings came on the day a dramatic split screen showed America divided: hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country took to the streets to rally against Trump as the president presided over a big military parade in Washington -- a rare spectacle criticized as seeking to glorify him. Trump has condemned the killing of Hortman and her husband Mark and the wounding of state Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. In a conversation Sunday with ABC News, Trump was asked if he planned to call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris's running mate in the election Trump won last year. "Well, it's a terrible thing. I think he's a terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person," the president said. "But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too." bur/dw/mlm
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
LA rioters join the Democratic pantheon of honored haters and criminals
The entire career of race-baiter Al Sharpton was founded on falsehoods about the Tawana Brawley scam. Nearly everything the left told us about the Trayvon Martin fight was false. The 'hands up, don't shoot' Ferguson fable and the Covington Kids myth were quickly exposed. Advertisement The Duke Lacrosse and Jussie Smollett melodramas were laughable. Russian 'collusion,' 'laptop' disinformation, and Joe Biden 'fit as a fiddle' gaslighting were utter lies. But more recently, the hard left has lost its mind championing a host of violent, unsavory characters. Advertisement The illegal alien and El Salvadorian national, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was portrayed as a victim of unfair deportation in the left's larger, losing war for open borders. Abrego Garcia became a 'Maryland Man': a supposed poor victim of Trump overreach. He was constructed as a family man engaged in construction to feed his family, who somehow forgot to become 'documented' and was deported. In truth, Garcia is now facing felony indictments for human trafficking. Advertisement He was a likely MS-13 gang member, a violent and bullying woman-beater, and rarely employed gainfully in construction. Luigi Mangione was a rich, spoiled kid who dabbled in Jacobin politics. Posing as a revolutionary, Mangione ambushed Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. He murdered him in cold blood near a New York hotel. Instantly, some on the left embraced Mangione as a revolutionary hero who delivered justice to a supposedly greedy corporate capitalist. Advertisement Mohammed Sabry Soliman, like Garcia, was a violent illegal alien. He bragged about his hatred of Jews in general and Israel in particular. Soliman made some Molotov cocktails and tried to incinerate Jewish marchers advocating on behalf of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. Soliman's wife and five children, to whom Soliman filmed a video explaining his dedication to violent jihad, were also illegal aliens. Soliman may well have preferred to burn Jews to remind us of the fires of the Holocaust ovens. In the mind of the mainstream liberal media, the Soliman family was cruelly detained by the evil Trump administration that was considering returning the illegal aliens to their Middle East homes. But during the Los Angeles riots, the left went completely crazy as the entire Democrat Party and California state officials sided with violent protesters and illegal aliens. The open-border rioters soon got the message that left-wing California officials were on their side. So throngs began burning cars. Protesters spat on law enforcement and pelted them with rocks, firecrackers and concrete blocks. Advertisement Stores were looted. Critical freeways were swarmed and shut down. And for what? To protest the legal efforts of ICE to serve deportation warrants to a few hundred of some 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens who illegally swarmed into the United States during the Biden administration's four-year destruction of immigration law. California Gov. Gavin Newsom damned the federal immigration efforts as 'chaotic' and 'reckless' and seemed obsessed only with Trump. Advertisement Then Newsom dared ICE to arrest him. Like some antebellum, neo-Confederate states' rights activist, Newsom threatened to withhold California's federal income taxes from the federal government — a possible felony. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — recently infamous for junketing in Ghana while Pacific Palisades burned down — warned ICE, 'We will not stand for this.' What did her threat mean? Did she intend to use force to support the street thugs against her fellow American officers? Advertisement California Democrat Rep. Norma Torres screamed at overwhelmed ICE agents seeking to issue arrest warrants with the obscene threat, 'Get the f*** out of LA!' As the mob violence increased and public outrage grew, a desperate and now embarrassed Newsom could only double down on his obsessions with Trump. What has caused Newsom's Trump derangement? Is it because Trump called out the National Guard and Marines to aid an overwhelmed Los Angeles Police Department and stop the violence that left-wing officials and the media had appeased? Advertisement In sum, is the left once again trying to commit political suicide? Polls showed overwhelming public support for deporting those who illegally entered and reside in the US, especially the nearly half a million believed criminals. Trump's own most supportive demographic in recent polls has been Hispanics. Like all Americans, they are appalled by violent thugs and illegal aliens waving Mexican flags who have no wish to return to Mexico — yet burn American flags as they demand illegally to stay. The more the incoherent left claimed the protests were 'peaceful' and damned the Trump administration for sending them help, the more the violence continued. And the more the public was relieved that Trump was trying to stop the riots. Democrats currently lack sane and effective leaders. But that is no excuse to swoon over creepy gang-bangers, spoiled-brat assassins, antisemitic burners of Jews, and illegal aliens breaking the law and damning America — while waving Mexican flags. Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
Wall Street Journal
an hour ago
- Wall Street Journal
Will Washington Learn From Israel's Strikes?
Israel stunned the world last year with a sabotage operation targeting Hezbollah's pagers. On Friday it accomplished a similar feat as it struck the Islamic Republic's nuclear program ('Israel's Nuclear Good Deed,' Review & Outlook, June 14). Mossad agents reportedly prepositioned drones within Iran that eliminated its air defenses and missile launchers. While Americans are beneficiaries of these operations today, we could be vulnerable to such tactics from our adversaries tomorrow. Chinese Communist Party-controlled entities have infiltrated the U.S. and now enjoy multiple access points to critical infrastructure. Local law-enforcement agencies rely on drones designed and manufactured by DJI, a Chinese company with links to the People's Liberation Army. Washington has warned that DJI drones provide data about our infrastructure to Beijing. Chinese companies, like Huawei and Sungrow, account for a significant portion of U.S. solar inverters, which allow solar power to support the grid. This dependency allows Beijing to target towns and cities throughout America, as well as data centers powering AI. Our ports are also dominated by ZPMC cranes embedded with Communist Party-controlled software.
