When FBI agents knocked on Lul Noor Abdi’s door in July asking about her teenage son’s whereabouts, advice from family and friends in Utah’s Somali community infiltrated her mind.
“Don’t say your son is in Somalia because he’ll automatically be labeled as a terrorist,” she’d been told.
So Abdi lied.
Instead of telling agents that her 18-year-old son was attending business school in Somalia and living with an uncle, she said he was in Uganda with a grandfather and that she had been sending money there.
The lie landed the 42-year-old shopkeeper in federal court. Abdi — well-known in Salt Lake City as a respected teacher at the local mosque, who is quick to give fellow refugees in need a ride to stores or doctor’s appointments — was indicted in August on a felony false information charge for lying to FBI agents.
She pleaded guilty on Tuesday before Judge Clark Waddoups, and will face up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine when she is sentenced on March 22.
Salt Lake City’s Somali community has rallied around Abdi, saying she didn’t intend to break the law and acted out of a mistrust of the government she gained in part from witnessing genocide in her war-torn homeland.
Abdi lied to investigators because she feared she would be viewed as a terrorist or as an accomplice to an extremist, as reports about unrest and piracy in Somalia increased in recent months, said her nephew, Mohamed Sharif.
Sharif said Abdi’s son isn’t a terrorist and was wrongly flagged as having ties to al-Qaida when his stepbrother, a member of the U.S. Army, contacted FBI officials with concerns upon learning that Abdi’s son was returning to Somalia in 2006.
Abdi sent the boy back to Uganda in 2007 to live with his grandfather after the boy got into trouble with drugs in Maine. He moved from his grandfather’s home to an uncle’s house in Somalia, where he had different school opportunities, Sharif said.
That is when the boy’s stepbrother contacted the FBI, Sharif said, and agents soon contacted Abdi based on her stepson’s concerns that Abdi’s son could be influenced by al-Qaida in Somalia.
Scared, Abdi altered the truth, Sharif said.
She didn’t know where the act would lead, he said.
Abdi’s attorney, M. Tyler Williams, said his client now understands that what she did was wrong and wants to take responsibility for her actions.
“Part of being an American citizen is fessing up when you make a mistake,” Williams said. “She was afraid by sending money to Somalia, it would cast her in a bad light. We’re in the process of clearing that up.”
Abdi’s son, who is a U.S. citizen like his mother, will soon return to Utah, said Williams and Sharif. He has been studying business in college and is just like “a regular teen” Sharif said. The boy isn’t a terrorist, he said.
Sharif said the family wishes Abdi’s stepson, who last was staying at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., after returning from a recent tour of duty, wouldn’t have taken the case to the FBI before consulting with family. He said the stepson and Abdi’s son do not get along, leaving some family members to wonder if the stepson’s report to the FBI was the result of a rift between the two.
The FBI does not comment on open investigations and would not offer more details about Abdi’s son. Agents attended Tuesday’s hearing in federal court, but did not speak about the case.
Many of Abdi’s supporters attended her Tuesday court hearing and frequent her store, Waamo, on State Street. They are optimistic their friend will come out of court with a mild punishment. Abdi came to the U.S. in 2000 and has weathered personal adversity, including her husband’s murder. He was working for the United Nations in Somalia when extremists killed him during the country’s conflict in the early 1990s, Williams said.
Farasle Abdirahman, another family member of Abdi’s, said the Somali community has organized to write letters of support to Waddoups, pleading Abdi’s case.
“She supports the community a lot,” he said. “Now we are supporting her.”
mrogers@sltrib.com
Source: The Salt Lake City Tribune.
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