He was Dahir Adan, 22, born in Africa and brought here 15 years ago. The head of Minnesota CAIR expressed fears of a “potential for backlash,” and Democrat Gov. Mark Dayton called for “religious and racial tolerance.”
There it is. The reason Trump has been so successful. Why, after every bloody, homicidal jihad attack in the cause of Allah, Muslim groups and their running dogs in the media hand-wring about non-existent “backlash.” Politicians calling for “religious and racial tolerance” are clueless and complicit. Islam is not a race and why aren’t politicians calling for religious tolerance under Islam — the most viciously intolerant religion on the face of the earth.
The media never once looks at what is driving this bloodshed.
Instead of Muslims reflecting on what is wrong with Islam, they attack the target, the victim.
Hussein of CAIR went on to call the attack “an isolated incident, and we still don’t know the full facts.” Daily acts of jihad are not “isolated.”
He likes one book – the Quran.
Family ID’s attacker behind ‘potential act of terrorism’ in St. Cloud,” By Paul Walsh, Beatrice Dupuy and Brandon Stahl, Star Tribune, September 18, 2016:
The attacker who wounded 9 inside the mall was shot and killed by an off-duty officer. The father revealed the suspect’s identity.
ST. CLOUD — The attack in St. Cloud’s main shopping center that left nine people with stab wounds is being treated as an act of terror, federal authorities said Sunday.
In a media briefing after midnight Sunday, Police Chief William Blair Anderson said an off-duty officer from another jurisdiction confronted and fatally shot the suspect Saturday night inside Crossroads Center. He said the man — dressed in a private security uniform — reportedly asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim before assaulting them, and referred to Allah during the attacks.
“We are currently investigating this as a potential act of terrorism,” said the FBI’s Richard Thornton, speaking at a news conference at Police Department headquarters early Sunday afternoon. Thornton did not link the attack to a specific terror group.
Roughly 12 hours after the stabbings, a news agency said to speak for ISIL went to Twitter to claim credit for the mall violence. “The executor of the stabbing attacks in Minnesota yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition,” the posting by the AMAQ news agency read.
It was not immediately clear whether ISIL had planned the attack or was giving a nod to a “lone wolf” — of which there have been many around the world — inspired by the terror group’s global message.
While law enforcement has yet to reveal the name of the suspect, his father identified him as Dahir A. Adan, 22. Interviewed Sunday through a translator, Ahmed Adan said his son was born in Africa and had lived in the United States for 15 years.
Police told Ahmed Adan at about 9 p.m. Saturday that his son had died at the mall. He said that he had “no suspicion” of his son being involved in any terror activity. The father added that police raided the apartment on St. Germain street Sunday morning and seized photos and other materials, but they said nothing to him about the stabbings at the mall.
Police executed search warrants for two apartments, including the apartment where Adan lived with his father. Thornton said investigators are analyzing his electronic records to determine a motive for the attack.
“We don’t know if the suspect was in contact with or inspired by foreign terrorist organizations,” he said.
Inside the building where the younger Adan lived, neighbor said he sometimes seen wearing a security guard uniform. A cousin down the hall in the same apartment described Dahir Adan as a good person who minded his own business.
At the news conference Sunday, Mayor Dave Kleis said there were nine stabbing victims—seven male and two female, ranging in age from a 15-year-old girl to a 53-year-old man. Three remained hospitalized as of 7 a.m. The officer who killed the suspect was identified as Jason Falconer, a former police chief in nearby Albany.
“The officer’s life was clearly in danger,” Kleis said, pointing to interior surveillance video that shows the officer shooting, and the suspect falling and getting back up three times, and at one point lunging toward Falconer.
Alerted to the praise for his actions coming from Gov. Mark Dayton and Sen. Amy Klobuchar for his actions inside the mall, Falconer said Sunday afternoon, “I’ve been trying to stay away from it all, for the time being.”
Falconer, a firearms trainer and permit to carry advocate, owns Tactical Advantage and Tactical Firearms Training in Waite Park, His professional biography says he “specializes in reality-based firearms, law enforcement and personal security training.”
Jaylani Hussein, executive director in Minnesota of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Sunday afternoon that “we are definitely concerned about the potential for backlash in the community, both in the immediate run and the longer term.”
Hussein went on to call the attack “an isolated incident, and we still don’t know the full facts.”
Local and federal officers were spotted late Sunday morning outside an apartment building, where the suspect was believed to have lived.
Minnesota is home to the nation’s largest ongoing terrorism recruitment investigation, with 11 Somali-Minnesotans having been charged since late 2014 in an alleged plot to travel to Syria and join ISIL. Two were charged in absentia after they successfully left the country — among at least five young Minnesotans federal officials say successfully joined the group. Six others pleaded guilty and three were convicted in a high-profile May trial.
The cases, which followed the departures of several dozen men and women to join the terror group Al-Shabab in Somalia years prior, led the U.S. Department of Justice to select Minneapolis as one of three federal pilot cities for a project to counter radical recruitment. Ahmed Said, executive director of the Somali American Relations Council, said they don’t know whether religion motivated Adan, “but we know he is a Somali.”
“Let us not rush and jump into conclusions,” Said said in a statement. “…We strongly stress that everybody calms down and focus on what unites us than what divides us in these difficult times.”
The rampage began when Adan entered through the Sears in the mall’s southeast corner, and shooting of Adan happened inside Macy’s, according to Mayor Dave Kleis. Those stabbed were attacked starting about 8:15 p.m. in corridors, businesses and common areas, authorities said.
Crossroads Center mall, the main shopping center in St. Cloud, Minn., is shut down Sunday, Sept. 9, 2016 after eight people were stabbed the previous evening.
Leila Navidi, Star Tribune
Crossroads Center mall, the main shopping center in St. Cloud, Minn., is shut down Sunday, Sept. 9, 2016 after eight people were stabbed the previous evening.The mall, located on heavily traveled W. Division Street, will not be open Sunday but will be back in business the next day starting at 10 a.m., said Kevin Berry, spokesman for the Chicago-based company that operates the mall.
“We are devastated by the events that happened at Crossroads Center,” Berry, of General Growth Properties, said in a statement Sunday. “Out of respect to the victims, their families and the ongoing investigation, the shopping center will be closed today.”
Berry’s statement was posted on the mall’s exterior doors explaining to would-be shoppers why the center was closed.
In the meantime, police press on with piecing together the events surrounding the violence and are trying to learn more about the attacker.
The mall attack got national exposure when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton mentioned it, saying she’d been briefed about the incident as well as suspicious explosions Saturday in New York and New Jersey, according to the Associated Press. She called on the nation to support first responders and to pray for victims and told reporters traveling with her that she will have more to say when more is known about the incidents.
In response to the bloodshed in St. Cloud, Gov. Dayton said he was “appalled at the terrible attacks on innocent Minnesotans in St. Cloud last night. If true that they were motivated by religious bigotry, I condemn them even more strongly. … I ask everyone in the St. Cloud area and throughout Minnesota to rise above this atrocity and act to make religious and racial tolerance one of the ways in which Minnesotans again lead our country.”
Dayton said he will travel to St. Cloud on Monday to “offer my support to city officials and its citizens.”
At the Mall of America in Bloomington, one of the world’s largest shopping malls and often mention as a possible terror target, officials there said in a statement that “we have implemented additional police and security measures during this time.”
The layout of stores at Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minn. Authorities say the stabbing suspect started at the Sears and made his way to the Macy’s.
Screenshot from Crossroads Center website.
The layout of stores at Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minn. Authorities say the stabbing suspect started at the Sears and made his way to the Macy’s.Much the same is being carried out at Eden Prairie Center, “although there are no known threats” to that suburban mall, a statement read.
Tami Dung who owns a nail salon, Nails Sophisticates, inside the mall, said she saw crowds of people flooding out of the center after her salon closed at 8 p.m. She was busy cleaning up, when she saw police cars lining outside the center. Her first thought was to flee.
Dung jumped in her car and drove home. Her brother-in-law called her to let her know what was going on. “I was so scared to be too close.”
Sabrina Bender arrived with three of her four children to the Crossroads Center Sunday. Bender had been shopping in the mall the day before with her children around 2 p.m. She said she felt safe in her St. Cloud community until Saturday’s events.
“It is beyond scary,” she said. ” My kids were here.”
“We will be diligent and get to the bottom of this,” Anderson said, adding that police had prior contact with the suspect, but only related to traffic stops. “The entire mall is an active crime scene,” he said.
The chief added that St. Cloud “won’t be the same.”
