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St. Paul, Minn. — Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison said the U.S. government is trying to ensure the safe return of some of the young Somali-American men believed to be fighting with a terrorist group in their homeland. Ellison said he has been included in classified briefings about efforts to bring the missing men back to the Twin Cities. At least four Somali-American men from Minnesota who left to fight in the Horn of Africa have died there in recent months. One of youngest, a skinny teenager from Minneapolis named Burhan Hassan, was trying to leave the fighting and make his...

Brian and Doris Johnson have passed out free Bibles at the Twin Cities Pride Festival for 11 years, but this year their free gifts got them arrested. After being told they couldn't have a booth at this year's festival, the family came anyway and ended up behind bars for trespassing. The Pride Festival started Saturday in Loring Park and is considered the third-largest GLBT celebration in the nation. Since the festival rented out the entire park, police said they could choose which vendors to allow in the park. The Johnsons are born-again Christians and believe homosexuality is a sin. Pride...

A group of individuals was recently denied the privilege of having a booth at the Twin Cities Pride Festival due to the fact that they believe what the Bible says about homosexuality. The following email correspondence has been posted as a result.

“Somalis, FBI in other U.S. cities on alert for terrorist recruiting” “While Minneapolis is the core of an investigation, leaders elsewhere want to keep youth from being drawn to violence.” COLUMBUS, OHIO - SNIPPET: “”No one has disappeared,” said Ahmed Hosh, who works with Somali youths in Columbus. “But if those who did the recruiting were individuals talking to someone alone, the scary thing is it could happen here.” The Twin Cities area has been at the center of the federal investigation ever since a 27-year-old from Minneapolis blew himself up in a suicide attack in Somalia last fall. But...

A young Somali man from Minneapolis believed to have been recruited by a terrorist group to travel to his war-torn homeland has returned to Minnesota, a community leader said Saturday. Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said Saturday that the 22-year-old man was recruited for jihad before a change of heart led him to return in recent months. Jamal wouldn't confirm the man's identity, saying that he and his family fear for their safety and are in hiding. Others identified him only as Kamal. The disappearances of perhaps a dozen young men from the Twin Cities...

Somalis in U.S. draw FBI attention War at home seen as lure The FBI is expanding contacts with Somali immigrant communities in the U.S., especially in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, fearing that terrorists are recruiting young men for suicide missions in their homeland. FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson, spokesman for the Twin Cities FBI field office, described the effort as community outreach. Many members of the Somali community are concerned over disappearances, he said.

A leader of a Minneapolis mosque today criticized testimony at a U.S. Senate hearing that indirectly linked it to a terrorist group's recruitment of young Somali men from the city. Farhan Hurre, director of the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in south Minneapolis rebuffed what he called "finger-pointing and false allegations" at the hearing held Wednesday by the Senate's homeland security committee. Mosque leaders have repeatedly pushed back against rumors and news reports that have drawn a connection between it and the disappearance of as many as 20 Somali-Americans from the Twin Cities. During the hearing, a representative of the local...

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said it will file suit today against a publicly funded charter school, alleging that it is promoting the Muslim religion and that its directors are using a holding company to illegally funnel taxpayer dollars to a Muslim organization. The suit was to be filed this afternoon in U.S. District Court against Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, known as TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education, which the ACLU says is at fault for failing to uncover and stop the alleged transgressions. The suit names the department and Alice Seagren, the state education commissioner, as...

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said it will file suit today against a publicly funded charter school, alleging that it is promoting the Muslim religion and that it is leasing school space from a religious organization, the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, without following state law.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – On the day Muslims around the world began to celebrate Eid al-Adha, Fatuma Mohamed was at the Mall of America (MOA), far away from where she would normally say her prayers. But she and other Muslims needed to take time from the activities of the mall and find a quiet area to pray as Muslims do during the festival that commemorates Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his only son for God. “I said my prayer right at that corner,” Mohamed said, pointing to the spot. Another Muslim, Amran Ali, did the same. “I had to say my prayer...

BURNSVILLE, Minn. (FOX 9)—One of the five men suspected to be a suicide bomber who killed himself and 29 others last October in Somalia, was buried Wednesday at a Burnsville Cemetery. FOX 9 has learned DNA tests have confirmed Shirwa Ahmed was one of five suicide bombers who killed himself and 29 others last October in northern Somalia. He is also a Minnesotan and a naturalized U.S. citizen. The FBI helped return Ahmed's remains to his family. At a Twin Cities cemetery in Burnsville Wednesday afternoon, the suspected suicide bomber was laid to rest. Shirwa Ahmed, 27, was given a...

The Somali community in the Metro has become fearful after reports that one of their own was a suicidal bomber. Federal sources say Shirwa Ahmed blew himself up in a suicide bombing in northern Somali last month. They also believe he was a recruiter in the Twin Cities for a terrorist network. Government sources believe that as many as 40 young men who knew Ahmed, recently left Minnesota without telling their families. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS talked to Ahmed's family. They said they have not heard from him in weeks. The report was the talk of this busy Somali market on...

Killing and being killed for Allah (cf. Qur'an 9:111) More on the Somali jihad in Minneapolis -- home also of several notable Stealth Jihad efforts, including the attempt to impose Sharia law on the patrons of taxicabs at Minneapolis airport, and the refusal of Muslim cashiers at local Target stores to check out pork products. Anyway, have any authorities stopped to consider the question of whether we really want to import into the United States people who would blow themselves up as suicide bombers? Why not? "FEDS: Twin Cities man behind Somalia bombing, investigating network," by Sam Zeff, Bob McNaney,...

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal law enforcement sources believe that a Twin Cities man blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Northern Somalia last month. The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating whether Shirwa Ahmed had developed a terrorist recruiting network in the area. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS learned that Ahmed came to the Twin Cities in 1996 and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen. More than a dozen young men of Somali descent, mostly in their 20s, from the Minneapolis area have recently disappeared, U.S. law enforcement officials tell 5...

Honking their horns and stirring up faint clouds of post-construction dust, hundreds of drivers helped open the new Interstate 35W bridge this morning just a few minutes after 5 a.m. The two processions -- one from the south end of the bridge, one from the north -- were led by representatives of agencies that were the first responders when the old bridge collapsed last year. They were followed by Minnesota Department of Transportation maintenance trucks with sturdy, wide bumpers that kept drivers in line. Vehicles coming from the south were the first to make it across the 10-lane bridge, which...

Eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist organization, each one faces four charges for their alleged plans to disrupt the convention. Each individual was charged Wednesday with second-degree furtherance of terrorism, conspiracy to riot, conspiracy to commit civil disorder and conspiracy to damage property. Those arrested were Robert Joseph Czernik, Monica Rachel Bicking, Erik Charles Oseland, Garrett Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanial David Secor, Max Jacob Speckton, Luce Guillen-Givens, and Eryn Trimmer. The eight were arrested after Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies raided four homes in Minneapolis and St. Paul on Aug. 30 and 31. They are all being held...

About 1,200 people marched Sunday in support of undocumented immigrants in Iowa. The Statue of Liberty stood on both sides of the main street of Postville on Sunday, a symbol of how the volatile issue of immigration divides not only this Iowa town, but this country. On one side, a woman who was part of a group of Twin Cities Jews that helped orchestrate the rally offered a picture of the statue as evidence that America has always welcomed the downtrodden. But across the street, on the other side of a line of police officers, Rosanna Pulido, painted green and...

A horrific news story has slowly made its way into the headlines here in the Twin Cities. A local resident, his wife and three daughters spent the evening of the Fourth of July at Valleyfair, a local amusement park. They were leaving the park at midnight when a criminal began to molest his twelve-year-old daughter. The father intervened to defend his daughter, and the offender put out a call for his "homies." Eight "men" materialized and began to beat up the father. They knocked him to the ground and took turns stomping on his head. The man's wife and daughters...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Lebanese man who says he attended an al-Qaida training camp was charged Friday with lying to federal authorities about shipments of communications equipment seized by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, 41, was charged in a U.S. District Court in Minnesota, one of several places he's lived in the United States. A federal judge in New York, where Elzahabi has been held since his arrest in May, held a hearing for Elzahabi and ordered him transferred to Minneapolis to face two counts of making false statements to federal investigators. A criminal complaint by FBI...

The spectacle of the coming Republican National Convention will be brought to you by Minnesota's major corporations, even more than planned. Virtually every major Twin Cities company has given money to the convention's local host committee, donated free services or both. The surprise has been the ratio of local donors to national money. "They originally thought it would be a 50-50 split, and it's looking more like 60 percent local and 40 percent national," said Teresa McFarland, spokeswoman for the host committee, which is charged with raising $58 million.