CAIR Impeded FBI Probe of Somali Jihadist Group Behind Kenyan Mall Attack

Actual electronic poster from CAIR's website

From Judicial Watch:

The Al Qaeda affiliate that terrorized a Kenyan shopping center and murdered scores of innocent people has a powerful and influential advocate in the United States, the Muslim “civil rights” group known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). 

It’s unlikely that the mainstream media will mention the connection, but it’s deep and it involves interfering in federal probes involving the radicalization of young Somali men in the U.S., like the ones carrying out the attack at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Northern Nairobi. 

CAIR has also wielded its power to silence critics of the Al Qaeda offshoot—Somalia’s Al Shabaab—that stormed into the mall, murdered at least 68 and took dozens of hostages. Several of the jihadists involved in the attack are Somalis from Minnesota, according to a mainstream news report. 

They include 22-year-old Ahmed Mohamed Isse of St. Paul and 24-year-old Abdifatah Osman Keenadiid of Minneapolis. In the last few years the FBI and Congress have launched probes into the radicalization of the Somali American community in Minnesota. 

Al Shabaab recruits young men in local mosques and ships them off to train and fight in Somalia. CAIR, an Islamic terrorist front group that reportedly raises money for Hamas, has interfered with the U.S. government’s investigation into this operation. 

A few years ago it actually hampered an FBI probe into the disappearance of dozens of Twin Cities Somali men. Many in the local Somali community denounced CAIR’s actions, saying that the group was actually discouraging them from cooperating with the FBI. 

During congressional testimony, the uncle of one of the missing men—recruited and radicalized by Al Shabaab—blasted CAIR for instructing the Somali American community not to cooperate with law enforcement and standing blindly behind the mosque that radicalized his nephew. 

“CAIR held meetings for some members of the community and told them not to talk to the FBI, which was a slap in the face for the Somali American Muslim mothers who were knocking on doors day and night with pictures of their missing children and asking for the community to talk to law enforcement about what they know of the missing kids,” Abdirizak Bihi told the House Committee on Homeland Security.