These hard-working, loving women thought they had escaped war in Somalia and now find their children threatened with life in prison.

Faduma Hussein (mother of Guled Omar) and Ayan Farah (mother of Mohamed Farah) at U.S. Federal Courthouse, Minneapolis as trial of entrapped Somali youth. Not pictured: Farhiyo Mohamed, mother of Abdirahman Daud  Photo: Steve Clemens

It is so important for people in Minnesota and elsewhere to know that this trial of alleged conspiring Somali youth is based on stoking fear of ISIS when the young defendants hadn’t even left the U.S. The FBI arranged for them to get passports and set up a sting operation with the use of an informant and another agent posing as a Mexican black market operator in order to entrap them. The prosecution made its case through guilt by association with kids they’d grown up and played basketball with, guilt by social media connections, guilt by cherry-picked conversations taped by an FBI operative, guilt by watching videos (ISIS videos which the jury was made to watch…at least one of defendants said he hadn’t even seen one of the ISIS videos till it was shown it court!), guilt by providing marijuana to encourage bravado talk. Once again we are living in era where vulnerable people are picked off by government power to make everyone afraid…like the era of the Spanish Inquisition, the days of Salem witch trials, the WWII concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, Joe McCarthy/J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO…

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