Terrorists on the move from what I saw (sigh)….
"A militia member indicted in what the FBI once characterized as a terrorist plot to blow up a west-central Minnesota police station pleaded guilty Friday to weapons charges….
Did they set him up using an instigator, I mean, informer or…. ????
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"Minn. man home after being imprisoned in UAE for joke video" by Amy Forliti | Associated Press, January 10, 2014
MINNEAPOLIS — An American man returned to Minnesota on Thursday after spending nine months in prison in the United Arab Emirates for his role in making and posting online a satirical video about youth culture in Dubai.
Shezanne Cassim, 29, of Woodbury, Minn., told reporters he did nothing wrong and there was nothing illegal about the video.
‘‘I was tried in a textbook kangaroo court, and I was convicted without any evidence,’’ Cassim said after an airplane carrying him home arrived at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He said his ordeal shows the UAE is ‘‘scared of democracy.’’
So many are these days.
Cassim was arrested in April and had been held at a maximum security prison in Abu Dhabi since June.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who advocated for Cassim’s release, said his return home was ‘‘long overdue.’’
‘‘This guy has been waiting nine months for doing nothing but posting a joke video,’’ Klobuchar said in telephone interview Thursday.
Someone didn't find it funny.
Susan Burns, the family’s attorney, said UAE prison officials escorted Cassim to an airport in the UAE on Wednesday, where he was reunited with his father and put on an airplane.
‘‘You can imagine the torture they’ve been under for nine months, not knowing if they were going to see him, when they were going to see him,’’ Burns said. ‘‘There’s been a lot of anxiety . . . mostly due to the arbitrary procedures over there and the lack of transparency.
Was he waterboarded or worse?
The UAE-owned daily newspaper, The National, has said Cassim and his co-defendants were accused of defaming the country’s image abroad. Cassim’s supporters said he was charged with endangering state security under a 2012 cybercrimes law that tightened penalties for challenging authorities.
Thankfully nothing like that will ever come to AmeriKa, right?
He and seven others were convicted in December.
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"2d victim found in Minneapolis apartment fire" by Amy Forliti | Associated Press, January 04, 2014
MINNEAPOLIS — The body of a second victim was found Friday in the ruins of a Minneapolis apartment building, increasing the death toll from the explosion and fire that gutted the building.
The Wednesday morning fire also injured 14 people.
The body of the second victim was turned over to the medical examiner, the Fire Department said in a statement. The body of the first victim was found Thursday. Authorities have not released the identities of either.
The demolition of the building was completed Friday, and fire officials said they believe everyone who was in the building at the time of the fire has been accounted for.
Fire Chief John Fruetel said an investigation into the cause of the explosion and subsequent fire was ongoing. Investigators are focusing on a gas explosion as a possible cause due to the nature of the debris field and because some witnesses spoke of an odor, he said Thursday.
Becca Virden, a spokeswoman for CenterPoint Energy, said there were no natural gas leaks in the system and that the utility received no reports of a suspicious odor before the blast.
Maybe it was terrorists.
Fire officials say they received a call about an explosion about 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, and within minutes a fire raged through the three-story building. In sub-zero temperatures, paramedics responded to find victims on the ground, some with injuries that suggested they may have fallen multiple stories.
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