In November, St. Louis resident Mohamud Abdi Yusuf, a Somali immigrant, was arrested and charged with four counts of providing material support to a terrorist organization — a serious crime. But there was no great outcry of local concern, and for good reason.
The amount involved was about $6,000, parceled out and wired abroad over at least 18 months and possibly longer. The funds allegedly were sent to a Somali group called al-Shabaab. The U.S. government designated it as a foreign terrorist organization in 2008.
But the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-partisan think tank, notes weak links to al-Qaida. The group is a clan-based insurgent force against a provisional government in war-devastated Somalia.
At worst, then, St. Louis may have been home to a relatively low-level operative who had been sending small amounts of cash to an Islamist group deeply committed to one side of a struggle for power in a failed state with no functioning government.
Source: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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