Free Republic

Aviation buff John Zimmerman was at a weekly gathering of neighbors Friday night when he noticed something peculiar: a small plane circling a route overhead that didnÂ’t make sense to him. It was dark, so a sightseeing flight didnÂ’t make sense, and when Zimmerman pulled up more information on an aviation phone app he routinely checks, he had immediate concerns. The planeÂ’s flight path, recorded by the website flightradar24.com, would eventually show that it circled downtown Minneapolis, the Mall of America and Southdale Center at low altitude for hours starting at 10:30 p.m., slipping off radar just after 3 a.m....

Before Officer Michael Griffin was indicted on federal charges for using excessive force and lying under oath, he cost the city of Minneapolis $411,864.78. The city paid $140,000 in 2014 to settle a lawsuit filed by Ibrahim Regai, who Griffin allegedly knocked unconscious at a Minneapolis night club in 2010, while he was off duty. That same year, a federal jury in a civil trial ruled the city must pay Jeremy Axel, Michael Mitchell and their attorneys $271,864.78. Griffin allegedly kicked Mitchell in the chest and punched Axel in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious outside a club...

The U.S. Attorney's office said Griffin was involved in an incident May 29, 2010. That night, he was outside of Aqua Nightclub and Lounge on First Avenue. He was off-duty and in plain clothes. Griffin's friend began to argue with a third person. Griffin displayed his badge and identified himself as a police officer. The man tried to walk to Envy Nightclub about a half of a block away. Griffin followed and punched him in the face, knocking him unconscious, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Griffin then approached two on-duty Minneapolis police officers nearby, identified himself as an officer and...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Abdifatah Ahmed struggled for years to make ends meet. After losing his $15-an-hour job fueling airliners in Minneapolis, the Somali-American father of nine survived on low-wage jobs and public assistance. He complained about working hard, but never having enough money. His circumstances worsened when he was ordered to pay more than $700 a month to support three of his children — including one less than a year old. Months later, he surfaced in Syria, where he went to fight for the Islamic State.

The explosion took place over a Halal grocery in a portion of the city dominated by Arab immigrants: Ismail Adan, 34, has lived in the building since 2002 and left shortly before the fire. He said his mother had called him early in the morning and he left to visit her, but a cousin who was staying with him was in the third-floor apartment when the explosion occurred. He said the cousin leapt from the window and was injured but he has spoken with him in the hospital. “He’s OK. It’s not very serious,” Adan said.

An Islamist radical recruited to Somalia from Minneapolis inspired the would-be “Texas Terror” killers, who were gunned down in Garland, Texas Sunday night by a sharp-shooting law enforcement officer before they could carry out their mass-murder plot at an art exhibit sponsored by First Amendment heroine Pamela Geller. It’s just the latest example of how and why Minneapolis—and specifically the congressional district of Muslim Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) —has become ground zero for the threat to the United States from Islamist terror groups such as ISIS and Al-Shabaab. ... The terrorist threat emanates from the Minneapolis neighborhood known as...

Six Minnesota men of Somali descent have been charged with terrorism-related offenses in a criminal complaint unsealed last week. The fellows were allegedly trying to get to Syria to fight for ISIS, or as we sometimes more charitably name them in newspaper headlines, Islamic militants. Our local six are just the latest Westerners accused of traveling or trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group, which beheads people, throws homosexuals off roofs of buildings, destroys historical wonders of the world, marries off girls at about 9 years old, stones to death adulterers and shoots children. Other than...

"They never stopped plotting another way to get to Syria. These men are focused men who were intent on joining a terrorist organization by any means possible," Luger said. Luger said the six men are not part of an organized recruiting group but were friends who worked to recruit and help each other get to Syria to support ISIL. There is not one master ISIL recruiting organizer in Minnesota, Luger said; that makes it more difficult to stop. "I will work and help anyone who in good faith wants to break the cycle of terror recruiting in Minnesota," Luger said....

As of this morning, the arrests seem rather mysterious, except for the context of missing young men from the Twin Cities Somalian ex-patriate community. The FBI rounded up a half-dozen suspects in Minneapolis and in San Diego in a Joint Terrorism Task Force operation, but otherwise the feds have been mum about the specifics of the threat or threats: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The FBI arrested several people in Minneapolis and San Diego on Sunday as part of a joint terrorism task force investigation, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger confirmed Sunday evening. A Somali woman who...

A source tells WCCO that FBI agents arrested at least six people in Minneapolis and San Diego for suspicion of trying to join ISIS. Authorities say efforts of a joint terrorism task force led to the arrests. The six people taken into custody may be connected to the on-going investigation of Twin Cities residents traveling to Syria to support ISIS over the last year, according to the source. U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota and the FBI are holding a news conference Monday morning to provide more details.

The FBI made six arrests in Minneapolis and in San Diego Sunday as part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force operation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Minnesota office. “There is no threat to public safety,” .. More information will be released Monday morning, .. Omar Jamal, a Somali activist in Minneapolis, said the community has been abuzz about arrests Sunday of several Somali young men both in Minneapolis and California that appear to be linked to the ongoing investigation related to ISIS and Al-Shabab. He said he’s heard the number of arrested could be between three and six people.

Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain records regarding its response to the January 1, 2014, explosion of an apartment building in the largely Muslim Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The FOIA lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v U. S. Department of Justice (No.1:14-cv-02212)).

Some sort of tipping point seems to have been reached, with Sunday morning brunch patrons no longer willing to sit passively as noisy protesters attempt to guilt-trip them about being white, or having the disposable income to go out for a nice brunch, or something (in my view, mostly anger about being such losers). Gateway Pundit reports on the pushback in Atlanta and Minneapolis eateries yesterday. In Atlanta: Black Brunch protesters invaded several Decatur, Georgia restaurants on Sunday. Protesters report two establishments called police, with managers from Sweet Melissa’s trying unsuccessfully to throw them out.

The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service are investigating Community Action of Minneapolis, a defunct nonprofit organization whose leaders allegedly misspent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money.The investigations were disclosed for the first time Thursday in a new court filing by the organization’s court-appointed receiver, Michael Knight. He was hired by the state to assess the full scope of the organization’s finances after a state audit revealed the agency’s board and its chief executive, Bill Davis, used taxpayer money for a celebrity cruise, tropical vacations, a personal car loan and other questionable expenses.The new documents, first obtained by...

Some senior buyers are already gone. Vice presidents, too. But for 13,000 other Target Corp. employees in Minnesota, there's fear that the bull's-eye is on their backs. Target jolted the Twin Cities on Tuesday when it said "several thousand" corporate staffers will be laid off in a cost-cutting move. Executives didn't say who, when or where -- although the buzz is the ax will swing freely next week. Since the news broke, reaction to Target's $2 billion cost-savings plan has been split, especially by street. On Wall Street, analysts mostly liked the plan. Target stock touched an all-time high Wednesday...

Al-Shabab terrorist on propaganda video seeking to inspire lone-wolf attacks on malls, including the Mall of America in Minnesota. Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson warned that a Somalia-based terrorist group is encouraging “independent actors” to carry out attacks in Western countries, with the Mall of America in Minnesota among the specific targets, but he failed to mention that the U.S. continues to import hundreds of high-risk Islamic refugees from Somalia every month. The U.S. State Department’s refugee-resettlement program has placed more than 100,000 Somalis into U.S cities and towns since the early 1990s – all of them Muslims hand-selected...

Ibrahim Mohamed has worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for almost 11 years. Within that time, his jobs have ranged from cabinet-maker, to ticket-verifier to, currently, a cart driver. "Absolutely, I do enjoy my job that's why I stay on it still," he said. But now Mohamed faces a new and daunting challenge. He's been appointed by Governor Mark Dayton to the 14-member Metropolitan Airports Commission. He will be the only current airport employee. Mohamed's appointment is also historic and has not gone unnoticed. "His appointment is welcomed by the community but it also shows that it's long overdue,"...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There's less than two weeks to go for all of us to have some form of health insurance, or be penalized by the government. That means there's a last minute push in communities like Minneapolis's Cedar Riverside Neighborhood to sign people up. Every immigrant community has its own unique barriers, but in the Somali community, advocates are racing against both time and culture. Timadde Aden is a typical case. He's never had health insurance, but enrolled for medical assistance today through MNsure at the Somali Health Solutions office in Minneapolis. One of the employees at that office, Hodan Guled, says,...

Muslim imports in Minneapolis are now demanding a tax-funded “halal” non-pork food shelf at a free food pantry for the poor. As if it’s not bad enough that nearly all the “American” Muslims who have joined ISIS have been Somalis from Minneapolis, their relatives here are demanding that Americans adhere to the same Sharia Laws the Islamic State fighters are trying to impose throughout the Middle East.

A new project from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is using computer simulated training sessions to teach doctors in Minnesota how to talk to fat kids.The nearly $500,000 study using “virtual role play” to coach doctors is the latest attempt by the federal government to combat obesity.“Obesity in the United States is at historically high levels and is an important health problem,” the grant for the project states. “Interventions targeting children are a high priority because children bear the greatest lifetime health risk from overweight and obesity.”“Health professionals in primary care settings are influential in the lives of families,”...