Free Republic

A 26-year-old man has been charged with making false statements to federal officials investigating the disappearance of as many as 20 Somali men from Minnesota. Abdow M. Abdow, a U.S. citizen of Somali descent, was arrested Friday and made his first appearance Tuesday in federal court in St. Paul. FBI spokesman E.K. Wilson says Abdow's case is related to the investigation of the missing men, who are thought to have gone to join a terrorist group fighting in their homeland.

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...