Leader of area mosque arrested by U.S. agents

The respected leader of a Rainier Valley mosque was arrested Monday on an immigration charge, surprising those who knew his work in Seattle's Somali community.

Federal agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Abu Abrahim Sheik Mohamed at Sea-Tac Airport as he got off a domestic flight, federal criminal justice sources said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lorie Haley said only that Mohamed, 37, was "in custody on immigration violations" and is being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.

She declined to specify what immigration regulations Mohamed is accused of having violated.

While he is being held only on the immigration violations, the Joint Terrorism Task Force is continuing its investigation, a source said.

Mohamed, a native of Somalia, has led prayers as the imam of Abu-Bakr Mosque for the past five years.

The mosque originally was on Rainier Avenue South but moved earlier this year to a simple building on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South.

"I know the man. I'm shocked to hear that (he was arrested), if he's the one I have in mind," said Hisham Farajallah, president of the Islamic Center of Washington.

Farajallah said Mohamed, whom he saw at the end of the recent Islamic holy month of Ramadan, has a green card and is a legal U.S. resident.

Several Somali immigrants expressed surprise Tuesday after hearing of Mohamed's arrest, saying the imam was well regarded in the community for his counsel on a wide range of family issues.

"He is a leader for all the Somali community, not just for the mosque," Hassan Nur said as he arrived at the mosque for midafternoon prayer.

Nur and a man named Ali said that Mohamed would solve "99 percent" of the problems brought to him, helping people with questions related to marriage, parenting, addictions and youths.

They said Mohamed even started a summer program at the mosque to keep youths off the street and out of trouble.

Mohamed is "a wise man in every aspect," said Mohamed Abdi, president of Somali Community Services of Seattle.

Nur said he heard that Mohamed was returning from Dallas when he was arrested. Another man traveling with Mohamed was not detained but was told that the imam was going to be "held for a few hours," Nur said.

Mohamed has been the only imam at the mosque, which started six years ago without a prayer leader.

Though open to Muslims of all national origins, the mosque is used mostly by Somalis.

In November 2004, the Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested 14 people at about a dozen Seattle-area locations, including a business one block from the original location of Abu-Bakr Mosque.

Among those arrested in the November 2004 raids was Karim Abdullah Assalaam, who told an FBI informant that "his whole Muslim crew" is involved in an ongoing bank fraud scheme for personal gain and because "you can't go to war broke," court documents say.

In a tape-recorded conversation about guns, Assalaam told the informant, "I just want to die a Shaheed," which he defined as a martyr "who dies in the cause of Allah."

Assalaam is to be sentenced next month after acceding to a federal plea agreement.

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P-I reporter Paul Shukovsky contributed to this report. P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com.

And gee, look who they hang out with....who says local terrorists don't have friends.

FBI Terrorizes Somalians in South Seattle

Last month Seattle’s ethnically diverse Columbia City neighborhood roiled with the news of a federal government raid on a building housing four small Somali stores in the district. After learning from the news that the raid was part of a multi-city, countrywide dragnet against businesses with supposed financial connections to Osama bin Laden, anti-war activists at nearby New Freeway Hall, home of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party, jumped into action.

Market Stripped

Concerned for their immigrant neighbors, half a dozen workers from the community center grabbed picket signs and rushed to the besieged storefront two blocks away. They launched what turned out to be a six-hour picket line demanding respect for civil liberties and the rights of immigrants. They were joined during the course of the day by neighborhood residents, Somalians who saw the protest on TV and Seattle activists alerted by RW and FSP callers, bringing the impromptu picket to about 40 people at its height.

Protesters, local and national media, and a crowd of bystanders watched as agents from the Treasury Department, U.S. Customs, and Immigration and Naturalization Services, plus Seattle police, conducted the ruthless stripping of the Maka Market, cereal box by cereal box. The operation, which began about 7:30 a.m., continued into the night. Early in the raid, officials also stopped, questioned, and demanded identification from a number of individual Somalians who approached the store. The authorities compared photos they carried, presumably of terrorist suspects, against the IDs of the passersby and would-be customers. FBI agents also took photos of demonstrators.

Unjust Roundups

In interviews with the media, protesters criticized the government harassment of poor and working class immigrants who use the store to wire funds to desperate relatives in their famine-stricken homeland and bordering refugee camps. Unintimidated, angry Somalians crafted picket signs on the spot. Said one woman’s sign “My father is 90 years old. I will keep sending him $100. This has nothing to do with terrorism.”

Demonstrators condemned the raid as part of baseless and unjust roundups across the country that since September 11 have led to the detention of more than 1,100 people denied even the most basic rights normally granted to those in custody. Pointing to a retirement home across the street housing many Japanese Americans, they said that they were determined to see that the current, government-fostered hysteria over immigrant ties to terrorism does not result in the domestic internment camps that during World War II imprisoned thousands of innocent men, women, and children and took away their homes, businesses, and farms.

Anne Slater, the organizer for Seattle Radical Women, said this: “Every move that the government makes against immigrants is being done with no proof, and no accountability. The aim of this disgusting witch hunt is not to stop terrorism but to create an ‘enemy’ at home to justify weakening civil liberties for everyone, and to intimidate critics of the U.S. slaughter in Afghanistan. We don’t intend to buy into the scapegoating, and we won’t be scared off.”

Slater said that RW and FSP will continue working with neighborhood people about what action can be taken to defend the Somali community.

Source: press release dated 11/9/01 from Radical Women, 819 N. Killingsworth, Portland, OR 97217. Contact Jordana Sardo, office: 503-240-4462, home: 503-255-5776.

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