CAIR-Affiliated Man Charged With Obstructing Terror Investigation

It wasn’t that long ago that Abdirizak Haji Raghe Wehelie, a Somali-American, was working for the FBI as a translator. And even more recently, Wehelie was working with the Council on America-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration. In that suit, Wehelie claimed that it was unconstitutional for the U.S. government to maintain a terrorist screening database. But today, Wehelie has been identified by federal prosecutors as a criminal.

In an indictment filed in Virginia this week, Wehelie was charged with seven counts of lying to investigators and one count of obstructing a federal terrorism investigation. The 66-year-old allegedly misled investigators who were trying to make inroads into the Islamist Al-Shabaab terrorist organization.

Prosecutors say Wehelie’s crimes were related to his contract work for the Bureau. In his work, which involved translating wiretapped conversations for the FBI, Wehelie was apparently surprised one day to hear his own recorded voice on the other side of a terrorist’s message. Instead of being up front with investigators about his own relationship to those who recruit jihadists, Wehelie hid the truth and damaged the FBI’s case against people related to the Al-Shabaab organization.

“He is the third person in his immediate family to be publicly ensnared in a terrorism investigation,” reports the Washington Post.

Well, now you know why he surrounds himself with CAIR lawyers and tries to get the government to stop keeping a terrorism database. It seems that his whole family is neck-deep in this evil.

Sparking that lawsuit was the U.S. government’s decision to place both of Wehelie’s sons on a temporary no-fly list after the young men had traveled to Yemen. CAIR and other Islamic advocacy groups pressured the Obama administration to allow the men back into the United States. Later, in 2017, after the Wehelie boys had returned home, one of them – Yusuf – was sentenced to a decade behind bars for the attempted transport of high-powered weapons. In the indictment, Yusuf was described as having told undercover agents about his willingness to target military recruitment centers on behalf of the Islamic State.

Only a month ago, CAIR posted this message about Wehelie’s daughter on Facebook: “Hawa Wehelie holds a law degree and an #MBA from @Howard University and now practices law in Washington, #DC. On October 22, 2017, she was returning from a vacation in @Canada with her family when they were separated, detained, and interrogated. Her laptop and cell phone were taken and not returned for nearly two months. Her private data, including photos, contacts, and information about her clients were copied by the government without notice.”

The message included the loaded hastag, #FlyingWhileMuslim.

So far, though, they haven’t gotten around to commenting on their client’s arrest.