Tag Archives: Terrorists

The First Illegal Alien To Commit A North American Terrorist Attack Is On Trial, But Don’t Expect The Media To Cover It

Trump, after all the media ridicule, was correct in saying that potential terrorists have illegally crossed the United States’ southern border. Abdulahi Hasan Sharif of Somalia did. And it could happen again.

Todd Bensman

By Todd Bensman October 14, 2019

Many who have professionally worried, as did former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, that violent jihadists might illegally cross the United States’ southern border are often sanctimoniously challenged with this: “Name a single U.S. border-crossing immigrant asylum-seeker who ever committed a terrorist attack.”

Introducing Abdulahi Hasan Sharif of Somalia.

In 2011, Sharif had himself smuggled from Somalia through Brazil and Central America. Then he entered the United States over the Mexico-California border and claimed asylum. Sharif went on to Canada, where he allegedly conducted a double vehicle-ramming and stabbing rampage in 2017 in Edmonton, Alberta, that severely injured a police officer and four other people. He was carrying an Islamic State flag in one of the ramming vehicles.

Those who paid attention to this case were too few and far between ever to mention Sharif a year ago when President Trump provoked a denialist media backlash by claiming the border was vulnerable to violent jihadists migrating from distant Muslim-majority countries.

Sharif

The 32-year-old Sharif is now on public trial in Canada, facing 11 counts of attempted murder, aggravated assault, and dangerous driving. While he occupies a consequential homeland security pedestal of first border-crosser to conduct a jihadi attack in North America, his backstory remains largely unexcavated for learnable lessons to U.S. homeland security. That may or may not change in the coming weeks of a trial.

That Islamic extremists would infiltrate the United States through the southern border is a prospect that professional homeland security authorities have taken seriously since 9/11. Agencies have long invested in countering the perceived border threat. For instance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations agents are deployed throughout Latin America to disrupt smuggling networks that specialize in transporting foreign citizens from Muslim-majority countries such as Somalia into the United States.

The government labels such migrants “special interest aliens” so they can be flagged to ostensibly undergo enhanced security screenings, such as threat assessment interviews, to which Spanish-speaking people are not subject. As I said during recent field reporting on the migrant trails in Panama and Costa Rica, travelers on U.S. terrorism watch lists have been apprehended at the border or en route in recent years. Perhaps because as many as 20 such suspects a year were caught in various American security nets, none had yet been able to attack in North America – until Sharif.

Trump’s notion that something like this could happen outraged the usual suspects as baseless fearmongering even though dozens of Islamist terrorists successfully snuck over Europe’s external borders while posing as asylum-seeking refugees and these terrorists committed attacks across the continent, such as the devastating attacks in Paris and Brussels. Beyond Sharif, Europe offered much proof of concept.

The full story has yet to be plumbed to learn more about how Sharif got through the American cordon, what his motives and intentions were when he entered California through Mexico, and whether opportunities were missed to interdict him prior to the Edmonton attack.

What We Do and Don’t Know

On Sept. 30, 2017, Sharif allegedly drove a vehicle into an Edmonton police officer outside Alberta’s Commonwealth Stadium during a local championship soccer match. Sharif got out of the car and allegedly stabbed the officer before running away. An ISIS flag was found inside the car.

A few hours later, Sharif showed up in downtown Edmonton driving a rented U-Haul cube truck, which he allegedly used to run over four citizens, per incitement propaganda from overseas Islamist extremist groups. The truck overturned after a dramatic chase, and Sharif was arrested. All of his victims survived.

It soon emerged in Canadian Press reporting that Sharif had been smuggled to the Mexico-California border on July 12, 2011. According to reporting by Jonny Wakefield of the Edmonton Journal, Sharif left Somalia in 2008 and traveled through Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia, and Angola before flying to Brazil. (See interactive route map here.) Once in Brazil, Sharif worked at a chicken-processing plant before hiring smugglers to help him continue on to Mexico.

Sharif crossed over from Tijuana to the San Ysidro Port of Entry and claimed asylum. For reasons unknown, U.S. immigration Judge Carmene Depaolo in San Diego, only a month or so later, ordered Sharif to be deported to Somalia instead of granting him asylum. Was Sharif caught lying? Did investigators find derogatory intelligence about him somewhere? Or did Sharif abandon his asylum claim so he could be legally clear to seek status in Canada?

Whatever the case, deportation never happened because no civil authority in Somalia had developed enough to accept deportees from the United States. And because various U.S. court rulings and policies didn’t allow for such stateless people to be indefinitely detained, Sharif was released on an order of supervision. He was supposed to report to ICE regularly but failed to show up on Jan. 24, 2012, because he was in Canada by then, according to Wakefield’s reporting.

Wakefield learned Sharif traveled to Buffalo, New York, and with help from a refugee support group called Vive La Casa, he crossed into Fort Erie, Ontario, on Jan. 9, 2012, and filed a refugee claim that was granted later that year. Canadian immigration officials said database checks uncovered no information about Sharif that raised red flags, a usual finding with Somalis because no records exist on most citizens in that anarchic country. Likewise, Wakefield cited ICE saying Sharif had been found to have “no criminal history,” records of which would not exist.

Within 36 months of entering Canada, though, in 2015, Sharif was on the radar of Canadian intelligence agencies for espousing extremist Islamist views that included genocidal beliefs related to Islamist teachings. The RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team found cause to interview Sharif that year. Assistant Commissioner Marlin Degrand told the Toronto Star there was insufficient evidence to charge him at the time.

Questions Worth Asking and Answering

  • How thoroughly did ICE screen Sharif when he was in custody after crossing the U.S. border?
  • Did any intelligence failures occur in which Sharif’s background, motives, and connections to U.S.-designated terrorist groups could have been discovered?
  • What became of Sharif’s American asylum claim?
  • Did Canada’s immigration services know about Sharif’s deportation order and seek information about that or the fact that Sharif was violating his supervised release terms when he entered Canada?
  • Sharif spelled his name differently on his Canadian documents than on U.S. documents. Did this matter in some way?
  • Given that Somalis generally had no government-issued identification of any sort in 2011, how did Sharif obtain the identification documents and visas necessary to clear various customs checkpoints during his journey from Africa to Brazil?
  • When did Sharif radicalize? Was it before he entered California in 2011 or when Canadian intelligence flagged him for espousing genocidal beliefs in 2015?

One U.S. Committee Demanded an Investigation

In October 2018, during its final hours under Republican control, the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., issued a letter formally requesting that DHS’s Office of Inspector General investigate the Sharif case because “it appears there has been no comprehensive study of the incident.” There’s been no word on whether DHS OIG ever took up the committee’s request.

The committee wanted to know, for instance, how well DHS was vetting special interest aliens for potential terrorism connections (in line with ICE policy to do so), how often such migrants committed asylum fraud and were prosecuted, and how many were released early on bonds before they could undergo threat assessment interviews.

The committee cited a 2011 OIG report (the same year Sharif crossed into California) and a follow-up 2018 OIG report that showed ICE was neither screening nor checking databases for all aliens from countries of national security concern, which would include Somalia.

“The Committee is deeply concerned the vulnerabilities existing in 2011, which allowed this individual to enter, be released, and transit through the U.S. may still exist today,” Gowdy wrote.

What Next?

Alberta prosecutors never charged Sharif under terrorism statutes. Thanks to issues of relevance, it seems unlikely the trial in Edmonton will reveal the kind of information pertinent to American national security and, perhaps, not even to Canadian security.

Prosecutors will be interested mainly in proving that Sharif was behind the wheel of the two vehicles and was the one who stabbed the police officer. A publication ban has blanketed the proceedings, preventing local journalists from reporting anything not in actual court testimony.

The most certain way for America to get the information it needs to protect and serve is for DHS OIG to go forward on the House committee’s request for investigation — or, of course, a full-court investigation by one of our country’s leading media outlets.

Yet no one should expect any coverage of this case from American media, probably because writing about Sharif would require them to emphatically acknowledge a terrorist actually did cross the border and attack. Not to mention that Trump, after all the media ridicule, was correct in saying that potential terrorists have crossed that border and could again. Todd Bensman is a Texas-based senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies and a writing fellow for the Middle East Forum. For nearly a decade, Bensman led counterterrorism-related intelligence efforts for the Texas Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division. Follow him on Twitter @BensmanTodd. Bensman also worked for The Dallas Morning News, CBS, and Hearst Newspapers. He reported extensively on national security and border issues after 9/11 and worked from more than 25 countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Photo Steve Hillebrand/Wikimedia Commonsborder securityCanadaDepartment of Homeland SecurityDeportationICEnational securitySomaliaSouthern Borderterrorist attacksTerrorists

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EXPOSED: Socialist Agitators; Antifa Dominate German Climate Rally (Video)

EXPOSED: Socialist Agitators; Antifa Dominate German Climate Rally (Video)

EXPOSED: Socialist Agitators; Antifa Dominate German Climate Rally (Video)

  • Posted by Amy Mek
  • On September 24, 2019
  • 1 Comments
  • AFD, Alternative for Germany, Alternative für Deutschland, Antifa, Berlin, Climate Strike, Fridays for Future, Socialism
https://youtu.be/jd0FuWRfGcM

A representative from the German Conservative Party, the Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, recently attended a Fridays for Future rally in Germany, where he spoke with attendees. The must-see video could have been taken at any socialist gathering in America in that the rally-goers were irritated at having to defend their position on climate change and often attacked the interviewer instead of answering his questions.

In August 2018, Greta Thunberg, an indoctrinated political prop, began skipping school on Fridays to protest outside the Swedish Parliament to demand action from her government and the international community on climate change. Greta’s strikes were dubbedFridays for Future.

It was striking how completely willing some of the attendees were in their desire to impose painful “solutions” on the citizens of Germany in order to combat man-made global warming. One of the organizations represented was the very radical “Extinction Rebellion,” who has openly stated that air travel should be “severely” restricted and further demands that “significant dietary changes” should be imposed on citizens, “with people cutting back on meat and dairy”, as reported at the BBC in April.

The idea of limiting air travel and beef precisely echoes the proposals in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D.-N.Y.)  “Green New Deal” proposal where FAQs on her website initially stated in part: “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast…”

Also very notable was the interviewer’s observation that the so-called school children’s Fridays for Future movement consisted of quite a few adults with antifa flags.

Please watch and share the video.

Video Transcript:

So, good morning from Berlin. Today a nationwide strike for the climate has been called. We want to speak with individual participants to find out what they are doing for the climate and what their real motivations are. See you later.

The environmental policy spokespersons. —Thank you very much. We’re crowd control. —It’s not from me, it’s from him.

Thank you very much, but I attended a Stasi Academy. I just want to be left alone. —

Then you’re in the right place. That’s right, you’re exactly in the right place. Yes, that’s right. It’s pretty clear. And you guys are our escorts or what? —Apparently.

Are you ushers or usheresses? I think they would rather be doing something else. —You don’t really want to be doing this, do you? —I won’t talk to you people.

Excuse me, may I ask what you’re doing with these trees? Or what they mean? We’re making the dead tree procession. I don’t want to do an interview. Why? You’re making a dead tree procession? The dead trees, exactly. —They are from the AfD.

You don’t have to speak to them or let them film you. —Are you serious? Yes. —Nahhhhhh! —Why not? Why shouldn’t we talk to each other, isn’t that good? —

I don’t want to be filmed. You should tell them not to use your image —

Thanks for telling me. No, thank you. —OK, have a nice day. —Thanks.

May I ask about your protest action? —

We’re mourning the death of trees. I just want to tell you they are from the AfD. That’s right, we’re from the AfD. —Careful. —Thank you.

We need proposals that are implemented. We just need to make laws and radically enforce them. There can’t just be a bit here and there. —Radically enforce laws?

Well, OK, create radical laws that are enforced, and not trying to think of ways of doing something that won’t hurt anyone. I think it is going to have to hurt a little, but better a little now than much worse later.

How should we handle countries that don’t consider climate protection important? For example, many East European countries? How should we deal with them?

Well, that’s a good question. —That’s why I’m asking. —Well, if there are laws, then they have to obey them. Then, we’ll have to see.

So force them to protect the climate? —Yes. Why not? What is the alternative?

Isn’t that a bit dangerous, especially being German, forcing other European countries to do something they don’t want? —

It doesn’t have to be done as Germans; it can be done by reasonable people. —

Then who aren’t the reasonable people? —Yeah, the people who say that climate isn’t important, that’s unreasonable.

This says the Climate Crisis can only be solved by worldwide socialism.

Yes. —Socialism doesn’t have a great track record with environmental protection, does it? 

—Yeah, that’s the big lie coming from the bourgeois press in the west as well as from the Stalinists. It wasn’t socialism.

The climate catastrophe is international, so the working-class movement has to embrace it internationally. It is absolute important. It cannot be solved nationally. So, as you can see here, Fridays for Future, is it really a school children’s movement?

Here the kids’ movement seems to be unfolding here with Antifa Flags, Antifa protests. That’s also a part of Fridays for Future.

Anyone from the AfD should piss off! —Why? —Get outta here! —Why should we piss off? Hmm? Why?

Because you are s****y racists! Now piss off, man! —Go on, keep filming. You’re a racist, fascist party. Piss off! —

OK, but isn’t better to talk? Doesn’t that show there’s democracy? —No, it’s not. I’m not interested.
No, fascism isn’t democracy. —You think if Hitler were to come back, he’d say he’s a fascist? No, he’d say he’s an anti-fascist. That’s exactly what’s happening. Extinction Rebellion — a protest against extinction.

OK, so what are the goals or demands of the group?

If you’re from the AfD, I have relatively little desire to have a discussion with you. —Why not? Isn’t it good to have an exchange of ideas? A democratic discourse? —

Uh, no thank you. Not necessary.

No thank you to democracy. —Exactly. —OK. That’s a statement.

Mr. Hofreiter, a question. —Who are you then? —Jonas Dünzel. What do you think of the Fridays for Future movement today?

Who are you? —I’m from the AfD. It is better to speak with one another, rather than speak over each other.

Mr. Hofreiter? Mr. Hofreiter? Just a question, what exactly does the CO2 tax achieve? It’s going to get really uncomfortable here. —You are giving out copies of “Young World”, so what do you think about a CO2 Tax? Is it going to change anything? Or is it just another method of taking money out of people’s pockets? —It could help. It depends.

There’s a tax on champagne, but that didn’t stop people from drinking it. I read that somewhere.
Same thing with the gas tax. Putting a tax on it makes sense somehow. —Why?
Technically with taxation things can be directed. If it done correctly. —Taxes direct things. OK.

How should we deal with countries, for example the Eastern European nations like Hungary, that resist and don’t want to do anything?

First, we show that it works. If it works, then how it works. So then everyone will realise a large economy won’t collapse when the climate crisis is addressed. But we’re right at the edge of a recession, and it already isn’t looking so good. So let’s assume, everything works well, but the other nations still don’t want to participate. They say the reasons to do so are not discernible. What then?

I don’t know, but now I have to ask you, where are you from?

From the AfD. —You’re from the AfD? —They told you earlier.

Oh, I didn’t understand that. —Oh. —So will I be branded a leftist now? No, not at all. You’re handing out “Young World”.

What, excuse me, what? —Don’t let him film you. —What? You are from the AfD? You are AfD people. —You didn’t ask.

What, I didn’t ask? —These two here, our escorts told you. After that you didn’t ask, but you were informed. Well, I have to admit I didn’t expect it. —

OK, so what are you doing here? We want to talk with people, because in order to have democratic discourse you need two opinions. We want to present to people the other opinion (on climate change) that exists from scientists that see it differently, but is not reported on by the mainstream media. In Saxony last week our campaign vehicles were set on fire and our offices shot at with fireworks. Our members in Saxony are regularly attacked. —

That’s the escalation from the Leftists; they are also attacked. —

Yes, but for the most part it is AfD members that are attacked. It is not we who make the discourse worse. That’s why we’re here, to talk. —You want to talk?

We are. —Yes, I would say you’ve been relatively polite. There are AfD members that are polite. Yes, you can believe it. I think so, but they are probably the most dangerous. The wolves in sheepskins, you mean? —

Yes. I’m not a friend of the AfD. That’s OK. —You should have said it clearly. —You were told, by them, I will refer to them as colleagues. You must tell them that you do not want to be filmed. —

OK. So here next to me is Steven Helmut from the direction of the Young Alternative. Steven, what was your experience like at the climate demonstration? —

What I experienced? Well, OK. I would say it was more like observations. It is just sad how many children are being used. What really made me speechless was when a so-called feminist said that abortion protects the climate. That just made me speechless. I just thought to myself, this isn’t a movement to protect the climate. They are misanthropes.

Yep, that’s the closing for today. We’re going to continue. Have a good day.

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