MINNEAPOLIS _ A U.S. citizen has been jailed in central Minnesota and charged with participating in the kidnapping of a freelance journalist in Somalia, where he was held for nearly three years for $20 million ransom before being released.
Abdi Y. Hassan, 51, was charged in federal court in New York with six felony counts ranging from kidnapping to hostage-taking to illegal use of firearms.
Hassan was born in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. He was arrested Feb. 15 in Minneapolis and will be returned to New York for further court proceedings.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York said late Thursday afternoon that he did not know where in the United States Hassan resides or why he was in Minneapolis when arrested. Minnesota is home to the nation's largest Somali community.
Although the victim was not identified in the federal charging documents _ which describe him only as having citizenship in the United States and a second unidentified country _ the timeline of his captivity matches that of Michael Scott Moore, a German-American who was abducted by pirates in Somalia while he was there writing a book about piracy, according to The Associated Press.
The charges do not specify why he was ultimately released or whether any ransom was paid on his behalf.
Hassan and other armed captors on Jan. 21, 2012, abducted the journalist from a vehicle in the northern Somali city of Galkayo. One or more of the men hit their victim in the head and elsewhere with guns.
During the course of the journalist's captivity, enforced by men armed with AK-47 rifles and other weapons, the captive was moved to various locations. Two other hostages, both non-Somali, were abducted from a fishing vessel off the Somali coast by the same men and then released in November 2012.
Hassan, who appeared to the journalist to be a leader among the other armed guards, directed his hostage to make a phone call and encourage family to sell a residence to pay for the captive's release. This was one of several such calls made to family, and some of them were recorded by the FBI, which also secured videos of the hostage speaking on camera.
Threats by the hostage-takers if the $20 million was not received included withholding food and water from the journalist. The gunmen also demanded a letter signed by a high-ranking U.S. official pledging that the kidnappers would not be held responsible for the abduction.
At one point, the family member was told that the situation had "gotten very serious" and that another hostage had been tortured in front of the journalist.
A three-day deadline was set for payment of the ransom, otherwise, the journalist told the family member, the captors would sell the journalist to al-Shabab, a jihadist fundamentalist group that in 2012 pledged allegiance to the militant Islamist organization al-Qaida.
One video showed the journalist with a prayer shawl over his head and surrounded by masked and armed kidnappers. The hostage was heard saying that his captors wanted the United States and another country to pay the ransom.
Hassan arrived in the United States in September 2015. In an interview with a U.S. customs officer, he said he worked as a security minister for Galmudug state in Somalia, which includes Galkayo. He said a major part of his duties was arranging for the release of the journalist.
