Feds charge Mpls. man with lying during terror probe

Updated: 6:55 p.m. | Posted: 3:12 p.m.

Federal authorities have charged a Minneapolis man with lying to federal agents during a terrorism investigation.

Hamza Ahmed, 19, was among four young Twin Cities men officials stopped from traveling to Turkey last November.

Authorities suspected Ahmed, 19, was trying to get to Syria, possibly to join a terrorist group, when he boarded a plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Authorities removed him from a plane before it left the gate and prevented the other three men from boarding.

Somali-American community members fear that the recent travel plans suggest that the prospect of fighting for groups like the Islamic State remains attractive to some young Minnesotans, even after the brutality of ISIS has been well exposed.

Ahmed, a lanky man sporting high-top sneakers and dark, rolled-up jeans, made an initial appearance Thursday before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Steven Rau in St. Paul.

Prosecutors have charged the former Burnsville High School student with making a false statement in a terrorism investigation. His family declined to speak to reporters after the hearing.

Arrested Thursday morning, Ahmed will remain in federal custody until a detention hearing Monday.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger declined to comment on the three remaining travelers, but said they have not been charged.

In a statement, Luger said he will continue to prosecute "those who lie to federal law enforcement officers and impede criminal investigations into suspected terrorist activity."

It appears that Ahmed attended Burnsville High School from 2008 to 2013 but left just two months before completing what would have been his senior year, according to preliminary information from the school district.

Community activist Omar Jamal said he was in touch with family members of two of the travelers before the complaint was unsealed Thursday. Despite a national anti-extremism program to be launched in Minneapolis-St. Paul this month by Luger's office, Jamal said young people here still remain vulnerable to radicalization.

"It's very sad that they're still trying to find the ways and means to get out of here," Jamal said.

Jamal said he was also disturbed that the Twin Cities men were apparently trying to avoid suspicion from law enforcement by flying out of New York.

Jibril Afyare, another activist, said he called together an impromptu meeting of Somali-Americans Thursday night in Minneapolis to discuss the news and to come up with a new strategy to fight violent ideology. Afyare said while he's encouraged that federal law enforcement intercepted the travelers, the community must do more.

"We need to be more vigilant," he said. "This goes on and on and on, and we need to change the game. Our country is at stake."

According to the complaint, Ahmed and three male friends between 19 and 20 years old (identified only as H.M.M., M.F., and Z.A) took a bus from Minneapolis to JFK airport in New York on Nov. 9. Ahmed was booked on the same flight as one of the friends to Istanbul, Turkey.

Ahmed's itinerary had him continuing to Madrid, while his friend was ticketed from Istanbul to Sofia, Bulgaria. The other two men were scheduled to fly from New York to Moscow, with a final destination of Athens.

Ahmed made multiple false statements during an interview with FBI agents in New York and a subsequent "voluntary" interview when he returned to Minnesota, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

They include telling agents that he was traveling alone, that he did not know the others who were kept from boarding and that he intended to vacation in Madrid for four days by himself. Ahmed, however, did not book a hotel room in Madrid, and did not know anyone in Madrid, the documents say.

"The truth is I really don't know these people," Ahmed said in one of his interviews with the FBI, referring to the three other travelers.

But video footage reviewed by federal investigators show Ahmed and one of the travelers in his group arriving at the Greyhound bus station in Minneapolis together. All four men bought their bus tickets within a 16-hour timeframe a few days before the bus ride, according to the court documents.

Ahmed and one of the companions, M.F., used Greyhound's mobile website, and both purchases were made from the same internet-protocol address within 25 minutes from each other, suggesting they used the same computer or mobile device to buy their bus tickets, according to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Daniel Higgins.

In one of the FBI interviews, Ahmed also denied knowing a man who traveled to Syria in early 2014, the complaint said. But the two had been publicly communicating on Twitter between November 2013 and March 2014.

The two discussed meeting each other at a mosque and "needing to talk 'somewhere that ain't hot,'" according to the affidavit.

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