Somali fights charge of ties to terror groups

A Somali man suspected of having ties to terror groups pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of making false statements on an application for U.S. asylum, but chose to go to trial on a third charge in San Antonio.
Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane, 24, has been in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since entering the country through Brownsville in March 2008 and later applying for asylum.
Dhakane admitted he mischaracterized how he entered the country, including details about his life in Brazil, and that he falsely passed off a woman as his wife so she also could enter the United States.
He faces up to 25 years on each charge. The indictment alleges he raped and threatened the woman, which he denied.
The multi-agency Joint Terrorism Task Force alleges in an indictment that he failed to disclose on his application that from before Sept. 11, 2001, through January 2003, Dhakane had been a member of the wire-transfer network Al-Barakat and an Islamic militant group in Somalia, Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI), both on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Terrorist entities.
Dhakane told U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez that he's Christian and denied links to terrorist groups. Rodriguez set trial on those allegations for Nov. 15.
The Horn of Africa nation is caught up in an Islamic insurgency and hasn't had a functioning government since 1991.
The indictment also alleged Dhakane failed to say he was part of and later ran a large-scale organization that smuggled, or tried to smuggle, hundreds of people from Brazil into the United States, among them “several AIAI-affiliated Somalis.”
Dhakane told the judge he denied being part of any smuggling group.
News reports in May linked his case to a terror alert in which U.S. Homeland Security asked law enforcement in Houston to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the al-Shabaab group, an al-Qaida ally in Somalia.
Dhakane's lawyer, assistant federal public defender Alfredo Villarreal asked the judge to limit references to terrorism at trial.
“I don't want references to 9-11 (other than passing references to the date), any images of the towers coming down or mention of any future terrorist acts,” Rodriguez said. “We don't need to sensationalize it any more than necessary.”San Antonio Express-News

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