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Old 03-07-2010, 05:56 AM
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Default Somali man accused of smuggling East Africans through Texas

Somali man accused of smuggling East Africans through Texas

A Somali man who allegedly has ties to terrorist groups is accused of smuggling, or trying to smuggle, through Texas several East Africans with similar affiliations.

A federal grand jury in San Antonio indicted Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane on Wednesday on two counts of making false statements to federal authorities.

Dhakane, 24, has been in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since entering the U.S. through Brownsville in March 2008 and saying he wanted to seek asylum. He applied for asylum while in custody in October 2008.

The multiagency Joint Terrorism Task Force alleges he failed to disclose on his application that from before Sept. 11, 2001, through January 2003, he had been a member of the wire-transfer network Al-Barakat and an Islamic militant group in Somalia, Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI), both on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Terrorist entities.

The indictment, made public Friday, also alleges he's known by 10 aliases, mischaracterized how he came into the United States and left out key details about his life in Brazil. It also alleges he failed to say he was part of and later ran a large-scale human-smuggling ring that smuggled, or tried to smuggle, hundreds of people from Brazil into the United States, among them “several AIAI-affiliated Somalis.”

Dhakane, who asked for a lawyer to be appointed, is scheduled for a bail hearing and arraignment in federal court in San Antonio on Monday and faces up to 10 years on each count if convicted.

Richard Durbin, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. attorney's office for the Western District of Texas, said there was no apparent terrorist plot identified but officials still have to be cautious. Terrorism charges are rare, federal records show.

“The trouble with terrorism is you don't know who's going to do something,” Durbin said. “I don't know what was claimed in his asylum, but he omitted some stuff that was pretty significant.

“This is part of what we do because we're trying to disrupt potential problems,” Durbin said, speaking about the charges.

At a hearing late Thursday, Dhakane told U.S. Magistrate Judge John Primomo that there are no Somali consulates in the United States when asked if he'd like U.S. officials to notify consular officials of his home country about his criminal case.

Somalia has been marred by insurgency. In 1991, opposing factions drove its president, Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre, out of power, resulting in the complete collapse of the central government and banking system, according to the U.S. State Department.

Although the U.S. never formally severed diplomatic relations with Somalia, the U.S. Embassy there has been closed since 1991. Since then, several countries have tried reconciliation efforts to forge an agreement between competing Somali factions, and the U.S. maintains regular dialogue with at least one, the Transitional Federal Government, according to the State Department.

But Somalia remains unstable, and violence and civil strife have driven more Somalis to other countries, including Yemen, Brazil and the United States.

“Basically, if they're willing to go to Yemen, it's bad,” said Ben West, a tactical analyst with Austin-based Stratfor, a global intelligence company. “Somalia is about as bad as it gets in the world as far as living standards.”

“A lot of these people, the people who are being smuggled out (of Somalia), certainly there is a risk they could be a member of a terrorism group,” West said.

But West said most of the militant factions or terrorist groups in Somalia are concentrated in the south and are concerned with regional or local interests.

“We haven't seen any indication from any of these groups that they want to go transnational,” he said.

Asylum cases are confidential, so it's unclear what persecution Dhakane alleges if he is returned to Somalia. But given the track record of Somali cases, Dhakane could end up stuck in immigration limbo because he might not be able to be deported to Somalia, according to immigration lawyers.

“At the moment, it's almost impossible for someone to be returned there,” said Jonathan Ryan, executive director of San Antonio's RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. “Since there is effectively no government in Somalia, there is no ability to create travel documents ... If (U.S. officials) deem a person a security risk, indefinite detention can happen.”

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...ugh_Texas.html
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