Jihadists Smuggled Across US-Mexico Border

(Brownsville, Texas) Arrested in 2008 on immigration charges, 24-year-old Somalia national Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane has pleaded guilty to making false statements about his association with two terrorist organizations.

According top the Justice Department, Dhakane helped "violent jihadists" sneak across the US-Mexico border.

Locations of the jihadists are unknown but the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked Dhakane's movements and contacts in an effort to find the Islamists.

Prosecutors allege that Dhakane failed to disclose that he was a member or associate of the al-Barakat financial transfer network and Al-Ittihad al-Islami, or the Islamic Union, which wants to impose Islamic law in Somalia. Both are on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of global terrorist groups with links to al-Qaida, according to the indictment.

The indictment also said Dhakane lied about his movements before entering the U.S. in March 2008. It says he "participated in and later ran a large-scale smuggling enterprise out of Brazil" that smuggled hundreds of people, mostly East Africans, into the U.S.

Among those smuggled were several Somalis affiliated with Al-Ittihad al-Islami, according to the indictment.

Large-scale smuggling enterprise out of Brazil, eh? Just marvelous.