A Twin Cities man was charged Tuesday in federal court with lying to FBI agents investigating the disappearance of local Somali men believed to have been recruited to fight with terrorists in Somalia.
Appearing for the first time at the federal courthouse in St. Paul, Abdow Munye Abdow, 26, who is of Somali descent, was charged with making a false statement to agents last Thursday. FBI agents were questioning Abdow about a recent trip to Nevada.
According to the criminal complaint filed Tuesday, Abdow was driving a rental car last Tuesday near Las Vegas when the Nevada Highway Patrol stopped him. He and four others in the car told a state trooper they were going to San Diego for a friend's wedding.
Two days later, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer stopped two of the people riding in Abdow's rental car. They, along with a third person, had been dropped off by a taxi at the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego.
The group told the officer that they were going to fly from Tijuana to Mexico City and showed their plane tickets.
That same day, FBI agents interviewed Abdow back in the Twin Cities. He told the agents that he and a friend named Adam went to Las Vegas after Abdow had a fight with his wife, the complaint said.
After reaching Las Vegas, he and Adam immediately returned to Minnesota. When asked if there were others in the car, Abdow said there weren't, the court records state. He later said that there were three others in the rental car and that he only knew them by their nicknames.
"Whatever those guys are into, I'm not," he said, refusing to elaborate, the complaint said.
