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A fifth Somali man from Minneapolis apparently has been killed in his war-ravaged homeland, a relative said Friday. Mohamoud Hassan, a 23-year-old former engineering student at the University of Minnesota, reportedly died in the past day or two. "It's real bad news," Hassan's uncle said Friday night. "But that is what happened." The uncle, who did not want to be identified, said he didn't know when Hassan was killed, but added that "it's very recent. Today or last night." The circumstances of Hassan's death were not immediately known. Abdirizak Bihi, a community activist who visited with Hassan's grandmother on Friday,...

Note: The following text is a quote: Seven Charged with Terrorism Violations in North Carolina RALEIGH, NC—Seven individuals have been charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, maim, and injure persons abroad, David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division; George E.B. Holding, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina; and Owen D. Harris, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Charlotte Field Division, announced today. On Wednesday, July 22, 2009, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned a sealed seven-count indictment against the...

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...

He was a slight and sickly teen, nearsighted and, reportedly, confined to a room away from the fighting that raged throughout the city. But the reported death last week of Burhan Hassan, the second Minneapolis man of Somali descent believed to have died in Somalia, has jolted his family and the Twin Cities Somali community. Hassan, who should have graduated from Minneapolis Roosevelt High School last weekend, was reportedly killed in Mogadishu, Somalia's largely lawless capital. He is one of up to 20 local men and boys of Somali descent to have disappeared over the past two years. Their disappearance...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A former Navy sailor convicted of leaking details about ship movements and the best ways to attack them was sentenced Friday to the maximum 10 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz said Hassan Abu-Jihaad, of Phoenix, betrayed his country and endangered his fellow sailors.

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.

April 01, 2009 Relatives Of Missing Minnesota Somalia Americans Use Ties To Homeland In Search Via Terror Free Somalia Interesting tidbit: "Actually, it's very tough [for] law-enforcement agencies, especially the FBI, to go back and get information from Somalia," Ahmed(Osman Ahmed, a distant uncle of missing 17-year-old Burhan Hassan) said. "But as Somalis, we know each other, we have a tribe over there, we have friends, we are connected to the Somali government because we supported it. So we are trying in any way we can to get information." Yes, they would have a in so to speak. Further reading...

Muzzammil Hassan allegedly beheaded his wife Aasiya on February 12 in the offices of Bridges TV, the Muslim-oriented cable channel that he founded in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he claimed were dominating mainstream media coverage. He said at the time the station was founded that Aasiya was his inspiration for founding Bridges TV: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.”

Gruesome killing poses another test for US Muslims ERIC GORSKI, AP Religion Writer February 21, 2009 The crime was so brutal, shocking and rife with the worst possible stereotypes about their faith that some U.S. Muslims thought the initial reports were a hoax. The harsh reality of what happened in an affluent suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. — the beheading of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan and arrest of her estranged husband in the killing — is another crucible for American Muslims. Here was a couple that appeared to be the picture of assimilation and tolerance, co-founders of a television network that aspired...

(video) The story of Muzzammil Hassan beheading his wife Aasiya has been purposefully suppressed or under-reported by the mainstream media since the the horrific murder was committed last Thursday in Buffalo, New York. We know why, of course. It’s because Hassan is a Muslim-American whose mission was to improve the image of Muslims in the United States, and even with the obvious irony of the situation, the press just won’t let a good story get in the way of their agenda. So let’s play along, and instead of telling you more of how Aasiya’s head was knifed off in a...

The website of a New York TV network whose aim is to improve American perceptions of Islam was shut down this morning, two days after its founder admitted to the beheading of his wife. And while that irony might bring a momentary smile, another attempt to conceal the facts behind an honor killing right here in America should stir nothing short of outrage. Muzzammil Hassan, CEO of Bridges TV, whose motto is "connecting people through understanding," apparently didn't think Thursday's honor killing -- and make no mistake about what this was -- at the station might somehow blur that message....

Bridges TV founder and Chief Executive Muzzammil Hassan founded the TV network in 2004. According to a Reuters story at that time, "his wife came up with the idea in December 2001 while listening to the radio on a road trip.": "Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her," Hassan told Reuters ahead of Tuesday's launch. "She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn't want her kids growing up in this environment." So he founded Bridges TV to combat negative perceptions of Muslims. But now that he has beheaded his wife, I'm afraid this prominent...

NEW YORK A prominent Buffalo area businessman who founded the BridgesTV network to improve the image of Muslims in the U.S. has been arrested and charged with murdering his estranged wife – by beheading hear at his company’s office on Thursday. Police have charged the husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder in death of Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. In its logo, BridgesTV boasts of “connecting people through understanding” via its dish network. Its Web site quotes comments on the company by Jay Leno, Brian Williams and others, plus a screen shot of a CNBC interview with Hassan conducted by...

Maybe it was the time the taxi dumped him at the Iraq-Kuwait border, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. Or when he drew a crowd at a Baghdad food stand after using an Arabic phrase book to order. Or the moment a Kuwaiti cab driver almost punched him in the face when he balked at the $100 fare. But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation. And he didn't even tell his parents. Hassan's dangerous...

Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband -- an influential member of the local Muslim community -- reported her death to police Thursday. Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives have charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder. "He came to the police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead," Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning. Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers...

"Tony McDonald, a member of the University of Texas Young Conservatives, sets up a protest anti- American Civil Liberties Union nativity scene, dubbed a 'solstice barn,' on the university's campus in Austin December 4, 2006. The display features a 'Nancy Pelosi' angel, a 'suicide bomber' shepherd, and Marx, Lenin and Stalin as the Three Wise Men." "Josh Perry, a member of the University of Texas Young Conservatives, spreads hay as he sets up a protest anti-American Civil Liberties Union nativity scene, dubbed a 'solstice barn,' on the university's campus in Austin, Texas December 4, 2006. The display features a...

A Muslim cleric has claimed to have been tortured with electric shocks, left in a cell where rats crawled on him and threatened with rape after he was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street by CIA agents three years ago.The claims of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, appeared in an affidavit provided to Milan prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction in February 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported yesterday. Prosecutors say that the cleric, who was formerly suspected of links to terrorism, was driven to the Aviano military air base and flown via Germany to...

CAIRO, EGYPT - In a new video posted Thursday on the Internet, an al-Qaida militant who escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan urged Sunni militants in Iraq to join the terror group and claimed the U.S. military's security plan for Baghdad has failed. Abu Yahia al-Libi, who broke out of the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul in 2005, said it was the sacred duty of all mujahedeen, or holy warriors, to "stand steadfast together." He called on militant groups known as Ansar al-Sunnah, the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of the Mujahedeen to...

Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens. Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent. Mr Masri says he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan and mistreated there. He says he was released in Albania five months later when the Americans realised they had the wrong man. Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign...

Jill Carroll's captors appear to be involved in some of the most high-profile kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq during the past two years. A Monitor investigation - including interviews with other kidnap victims, US, Iraqi, and Italian investigators, as well as court testimony in Iraq - ties her abductors, or others close to them, to at least five kidnapping incidents, including Ms. Carroll: [...] The strongest evidence suggests that the same group that took Carroll also abducted Ms. Sgrena, the Italian journalist. In early March, Abu Rasha, the leader of one of the three cells handling Carroll's kidnapping, went into...