Case alleges that big money-transfer firm helped fund the killers.
The son of a Somali singer and political activist gunned down by Al-Shabab operatives last year is suing an international money-transfer company with ties to Minnesota for allegedly paying a bounty on her life.
The lawsuit comes more than a year after the death of Saado Ali Warsame, 64, a Somali icon who lived in New York and Minneapolis before returning to her homeland in 2012. Her longtime push for social justice included roles in pushing out the country’s military regime and becoming one of the country’s first female members of parliament. Her death was mourned from Mogadishu to Minneapolis.
The lawsuit may mark the first time a company has been sued for providing funding to Al-Shabab, said Joshua Arisohn, an attorney for Warsame’s 22-year-old son Harbi Hussein, who lives in Minneapolis.
Not long before her death, Warsame pointed her criticism toward Dahabshiil, Africa’s largest money-transfer business, which facilitates most of the $1.6 billion sent to Somalia each year. The company, which houses a subsidiary headquarters in Minneapolis, is widely used by Minnesota Somalis to wire money to relatives back home, but it has been under international scrutiny for a lack of security in how money is transferred — and to whom, including potential terrorists in Somalia.
Last year, the Kenyan government temporarily suspended Dahabshiil’s operations after an Al-Shabab-led attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in 2013. Several western commercial banks have ceased doing business with Dahabshiil, in part out of concerns over terrorist financing, according to the lawsuit.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
