Minneapolis:Somalis' "holy trip" of Haj ends at airport
Imam, mosque official barred from flight to Saudi Arabia
Two men from a local mosque were kept off a flight Saturday, and their lawyer blames "unfair suspicions."
An imam and a youth coordinator at a Minneapolis mosque were prohibited from boarding a flight Saturday morning to Saudi Arabia as part of a spiritual pilgrimage, an attorney for the mosque confirmed Sunday.
The attorney said it's likely the men are on a federal "no fly" list because they and the mosque have been connected by rumor to a number of missing Somali men whose families fear have returned to their East African homeland to fight in that nation's civil unrest or to receive terrorist training.
The FBI, which has been investigating alleged links between some in Minneapolis' large Somali refugee community and the strife in that nation, would not comment on the airport incident. The scope of any such links, if they exist, remains unclear.
Sheikh Abdirahman Ahmed of Abubakar As-Saddique, a large mosque in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis, and the mosque's youth coordinator, who did not want to give his name, were not allowed to board a flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, but were not told why. The youth coordinator said others in a group that planned to make the trip -- a hajj, or spiritual pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina-- also were not allowed to board, but he did not know how many people were involved.
Mahir Sherif, a California attorney who represents Abubakar as well as other Somali mosques across the country, said there are many possible reasons why the men are on the federal Transportation Security Administration's "no fly" list, which as of mid-August contained about 50,000 names. But he suspects that the reasons are linked to stories circulating in the Somali community that the mosque has been used to indoctrinate and train young men to return to Somalia -- stories that Sherif strongly denied Sunday.