Nine defendants sentenced in ‘Minneapolis Terror trial’

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SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2016 11 MINNEAPOLIS—The show trial dubbed by our local capitalist media, “Minne­ sota’s Terror Trial,” ended in November with the sentencing of nine young men (eight Somali and one Oromo) who pled to or were convicted of charges relating to alleged attempts to join the “designat­ ed foreign terrorist organization” ISIS (the Islamic State).

The pre-sentence period—which last­ ed for five and a half months—and sen­ tencing were another roller coaster ride through the Criminal Injustice System for the young men, their families, and their communities. They have been on this roller coaster since the Countering Violent Extremism Program (“CVE”) came to town almost three years ago.

District Attorney for Minnesota An­ drew Luger has been the program’s champion and point person since its inception, bringing together Homeland Security, the FBI, and state, county, and city law-enforcement agencies and bear­ ing down on the local Somali community with enticements and entrapments de­ signed and destined to “divide and con­ quer” this previously cohesive commu­ nity of immigrants and first-generation American citizens.

In this process the judge is supposed to play a mediator role between the pros­ ecution and defense, seeking the truth and insuring some measure of “fairness,” but working-class people and oppressed communities know this system has nev­ er served us. Marx and Engels wrote in the “Communist Manifesto”: “Your ju­ risprudence is but the will of your class made into law for all,” and nearly 170 years later, this is as true as ever.

Judge Michael J. Davis, Senior District Court Judge for Minnesota, showed re­ markable hubris from start to finish. The fact that a Black, civil rights award-winning jurist has taken it upon himself to find and eliminate what he repeat­ edly referred to as a “terror cell” in the Somali community is surely no accident. Before the final day of sentencing, the judge told the packed courtroom, “This community has to understand that there is a jihadist cell in this community—its tentacles spread out.”

The two young men who cooper­ ated with the prosecution and testified against their friends, Abdullahi Yusuf and Abdirizak Warsame, were the first to be sentenced and they received the lightest sentences—time served for Yu­ suf and 30 months for Warsame. The prosecution took the unusual step of testifying on behalf of these coopera­ tors, and even though the judge himself ... Fidel Castro (continued from page 7: “The legacy of Fidel Castro”)

the central directing agency of the revolution.

While successful in Cuba, Cuban-supported rural guerrilla warfare had to be abandoned as it became clear that isolated guerrilla struggles, especially with U.S. imperialism on the alert as never before, could not substitute for the construction of deeply rooted and disciplined, urban-based, revolutionary working-class parties.

Like all human beings, Fidel Castro and his compa­ ñeros in the Cuban leadership were never without flaws, mistakes, and shortcomings. Despite its social­ ist and democratic spirit and practice, beleaguered Cuba failed to establish the forms of direct democracy that characterized the highest point of the Russian Revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky.

Soviets (the Russian word for workers’ councils, as the basis for the political rule of the working masses)

do not exist in Cuba. In essence, Cuba’s Communist Party makes most of the key decisions in Cuban soci­ ety. In Socialist Action’s view, a revolutionary workers state finds its fullest expression in the formal, direct, democratic, and institutionalized rule of the working masses. A revolutionary party, no matter how dedicat­ said he still believes Warsame is a “ji­ hadist,” he closely followed the prosecu­ tion’s lead and issued the light sentence, an appropriate reward for a job well done at trial.

The “next round” of sentencing was for the four young men who pled guilty but did not cooperate with the prosecution. The prosecution was asking for 15 years each for Zacharia Abdurahman, Hamza Ahmed, Hanan Musse, and Adnan Farah. The extremely prejudicial ISIS videos that played such a dramatic part in the trial were back for sentencing. The judge revealed that he watched hours and hours of these videos to prepare himself to issue sentences.

With each defendant in turn he pro­ ceeded to clear the courtroom of young children and play a gruesome video, con­ tinuously prodding the defendant: “How could you watch this? You watched vid­ eo after video over and over. How could you support this organization? Are you a terrorist?”

As at trial, it was clear the men were taken as ISIS proxies, as if watching these videos was equivalent to person­ ally committing the atrocities. “I am a terrorist” defendant after defendant de­ clared in shame.

The defense attorneys seemed to agree that the best strategy was to accept the label of “terrorist,” argue that the expe­ rience since being arrested had enabled a transformation, and beg for mercy. It was a very demeaning process, excruci­ atingly painful to watch for those who care about the defendants personally or care about justice generally. And it was all the more painful because the mercy that was begged for was not granted.

Abdurahman, Ahmed, Musse and Farah will serve 10 years each.

On the final day, the young men who were convicted at trial on charges in­ cluding Conspiracy to Murder outside the United States, which carries a pos­ sible life sentence, appeared one after the other in Judge Davis’ courtroom.

While the capitalist press has implied that some defendants accepted pleas (which meant they must be guilty) while others CHOSE to go to trial (showing a “refusal to take responsibility for their actions”) and many supporters have asserted, equally problematically, that the bravest young men from the group steadfastly refused to plead to some­ thing they did not do and insisted on go­ ing to trial, both of these positions mis­ takenly placed power in the hands of the defendants that they never really had.

The truth is that the Criminal Injustice system in this country does not give de­ fendants this level of self-determination.

Those who pled guilty did so under the enormous pressure of multiple charges, each carrying potentially long sentenc­ es, knowing that members of their circle had already succumbed to the pressure.

Some were even “cooperating” with the prosecution, knowing that no Muslim tried on such charges during this seem­ ingly endless “War on Terror” has been found “not guilty” by a jury.

If that pressure were not enough, a Superseding Indictment was filed in Oc­ tober of 2015. In that indictment, filed more than six months after the bulk of ed to the people’s cause it may be, cannot substitute itself for the working masses.

The Cuban leadership’s forging of democratic work­ ers’ councils today would be the surest way to ensure the ongoing commitment of the Cuban people to the revolution’s historic goals, as well as the efficient planning of an economy that best represents the in­ terests of the Cuban masses.Fidel was keenly aware of the Stalinist nature of Cuba’s Batista-era pro-Moscow Popular Socialist Party. The latter opposed Fidel’s July 26 Movement’s struggle for power as “ultraleft,” if not “Trotskyist.”

In the view of Cuban Stalinists, whose policy was to seek a rapprochement with so-called progressive capitalist governments, including Batista’s during his first presidency, socialist revolution was premature and impossible in poor and neo-colonial countries. This contrasted with Trotsky’s conception of the revo­ lutionary process in the modern era—demonstrated to the world with the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Trotsky believed that, as in Russia, any successful revolution must be “permanent,” that is, it has to both accomplish the democratic tasks that modern capital­ ism could no longer implement and it has to place the working class, as opposed to capitalist reformers, in power.

The Cuban Revolution amounted to a rejection of the Stalinist “two-stage” conception of revolution, where­ (Photo) Farhiyo Mahamed (rt.), mother of defendant Abdirahman Daud, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

the arrests in this case, the charge of Conspiracy to Commit Murder Abroad— which carries a potential life sentence— was added to the list of charges on the five young men remaining. At that point, it seemed inevitable that anyone offered the chance to plead to the lesser charge, carrying a 15-year sentence, would do so.

This was a chance that was never of­ fered to Mohamed Farah, Abdirahman Daud, or Guled Omar. To his credit Ad­ nan Farah held out until the trial was al­ most ready to begin. He was being pres­ sured mercilessly to not only plead, but to testify against his older brother. His 10-year sentence is likely punishment not for anything he did but for how long he held out against the full power of the U.S. government.

As for the elder Farah, Daud, and Omar, the prosecution had decided these young men were going on trial for their lives. At the end of a deeply flawed trial, the three were found guilty.

Mohamed Farah was the first to ap­ pear. He was made to watch the graphic ISIS video that ends with the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot. Had Mohamed Farah set a Jordanian pilot on fire? It did not matter. The judge sentenced the 22-year-old to 30 years.

The next to appear was Abdirahman Daud, and the same public shaming that we had become so familiar with took place. He was given 30 years.

And finally, it was time to sentence Guled Omar. Many point out that Guled was one of the first people the FBI ap­ proached when CVE came to town. They wanted him to work with them, spying on his friends. He refused over and over again. So the FBI decided he was danger­ ous and drew a target on his back.

The prosecutor called him “irredeem­ able,” but the Judge seemed more con­ cerned with his charisma. “You’re char­ ismatic, and that’s why you are being locked up for the period that you are.” The 21-year-old received a 35-year sen­ tence.

Abdirahman’s mother commented to me that it almost felt like there was no judge in this case, just the defendant, her boy, against the entire government. No mediator between them, just a govern­ ment mouthpiece. It was clear from the start and throughout that this prosecu­ tion was political in nature. Now it falls on all of us to stand by these young men and their families through their harsh sentences. No Justice, Just US. n in overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with a workers state with the goal of building socialism are relegated to the distant future, if at all. This remains the critical issue that today separates revolutionists from pro-capitalist reformists.

Venezuela is a prime example of the latter strategy, where the Hugo Chavez/Maduro governments, unlike revolutionary Cuba, failed to challenge the essential framework of Venezuelan capitalism. Venezuela’s land, banks, and key financial institutions, as well as significant portions of its massive fossil fuel resourc­ es, have remained in the hands of its capitalist ruling class. This single fact explains Venezuela’s tragic de­ volution today.

To his death, Fidel remained the harshest critic of U.S. imperialism, constantly cautioning Cuba’s leaders to beware of the capitalist-restorationist intentions that underlie the Obama administration’s current overtures.

Cuba’s historic socialist revolution, its fundamental break with capitalism, demonstrates to revolution­ ary fighters everywhere that capitalism cannot be re­ formed, that capitalism is incompatible with human progress, that capitalism cannot exist without racism, sexism, exploitation, and war. This is Fidel Castro’s lasting contribution to humanity’s future, a legacy of uninterrupted struggle to usher in the world socialist order. n

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SOCIALIST ACTION