In Minneapolis on June 3, the U.S. government concluded its “show trial” by convicting three young Somali men, Guled Omar, 21, Mohamed Farah, 22, and Abdirahman Daud, 22 of several charges including conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, providing material support to a terrorist organization and conspiracy to commit murder, which carries a life sentence. The trial and the verdict exposes the depth of U.S. hypocrisy.
Show trial is the correct term for yet another FBI farce designed to make Americans fear Muslims and believe that they are in danger from a Muslim threat while also giving more justification to fatten the U.S. war budget and to add more legitimacy to its pretend “War on Terror.”
Show Trial is the term that was coined in the 1930’s to describe judicial proceedings in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany in which trials were conducted to manufacture an appearance of justice and fair play. Ultimately, show trials tend to be conducted for propagandistic purposes.
The government’s three week long case was built on the young Somali’s thoughts and many which were recorded by their friend Abdirahman Bashir. However, it was Bashir who the FBI initially had a case against and were charging with material support for terrorism. Bashir agreed to inform on, record and entrap his friends for his freedom and FBI payment of $119,000.
When it became clear that many of them were having second thoughts and were just “talking,” Bashir, with the help of the FBI, found a way to entrap them by obtaining fake passports assuring that the conversation would continue.
The prosecution presented primarily barely audible recordings of young people boasting about going to support fellow Muslims that were under attack by Syrian president Assad’s regime. None of them actually left the country, or even got a plane for that matter. At no point did the young people actually say they were going to join ISIL nor did they say they wanted to kill, with the exception of Guled Omar who boasted about killing Turkish border guards who stood in his way. But as he said on the stand, he was just trying to look big in front of his friends.
The young people never had a chance, starting with the African American judge Michael Davis who used U.S. Marshalls to intimidate supporters who came to watch the proceedings.
Davis revealed his real feelings when he said that the verdict was “right” and “just.” The jury was all White, which didn’t preclude that it couldn’t be unbiased, but these folks had to overcome their ingrained biases against Blacks, immigrants and Islam. There was no reason or evidence to believe they would be exceptional. They could only reach one conclusion, that which was called for in the script.
Consequently the prosecution’s strategy was guilt by insinuation, association and implication. The prosecution showed the jury hours of gruesome ISIL recruiting videos showing people being beheaded and even included one in which a Jordanian pilot was burned alive.
And taking advantage of jury’s provincialism, the prosecution exhibits were picture after picture of other Somali youth that had actually gone to Syria or Somalia. The prosecutions favorite tool was an exhibit with the pictures of 15 Somali youth, including the defendants, who had been accused of having joined or wanting to join ISIL. It wasn’t hard to make inferences that they must be guilty because they knew others who had gone to Syria and they all were Black, Somali and Muslim.
Contrary to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger’s assertions that these kids “were not wayward kids caught up in a fantasy,” that’s exactly what they were, kids being empathetic and caught up in idealism. Ironically, Luger (who also called them terrorists) continues to call himself a friend of the Somali community while framing up their kids.
These kids aren’t terrorists and Luger knows it and so does the FBI, they were merely convenient scape goats used as mere pawns in a game in their manufactured “War on Terror.”
Mel Reeves welcomes reader responses to mellaneous19@yahoo.com.
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