A campaign of intimidation inside Minnesota’s tight-knit Somali community is using online death threats, physical assaultsS, and pressure campaigns to stop people from talking about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s past, according to a new report published on Tuesday.
Sources told the New York Post that people who have questioned Omar’s background, her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, or her personal life have been assaulted in Minneapolis and Kenya, bombarded with daily death wishes, and warned they will be killed if they continue speaking out.
The paper states the protective network is not officially connected to Omar and it is unclear whether she is personally aware of the actions. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.
One man who spoke critically about Omar said he was jumped by roughly 15 people outside a Kenyan restaurant in Minneapolis, pepper-sprayed, thrown to the ground, and left with a concussion plus multiple cuts and bruises.
“I got jumped by 15 people and was pepper-sprayed,” the man, who was not named, told The Post.
“After that I don’t really remember what happened. All I know is I was thrown to the ground and had so many punches and kicks thrown at me.”
He told The Post he believes a popular Somali TikTok personality set followers on him by sharing his location after calling him a “fool” and threatening to “punch him in the face.”
“I was attacked because of this man. He set his followers on me after sharing my location,”‘ he said.
In separate videos, the same TikTokker is said to have told his audience that people in the community who “snitched on Ilhan Omar” had been allowed to get away with it for too long.
“People have looked the other way for too long, you bitches,” he reportedly said in one video viewed by The Post.
The critic later faced another attack in Kenya.
Another source said he receives death wishes every day, is afraid to leave his home, and has been verbally abused or physically assaulted when he does go out.
“I feel very threatened for simply disagreeing with anything to do with Ilhan Omar,” the source said. “If you don’t support her, then these people online really want to make you pay. I am fearful of my life every single day.”
A man in Somalia who goes by Aardile posted a video claiming he had put a hit on one critic, saying “we are sending people after you, they’re going to put you in hospital and in a coma.”
He claims another person told him, “You are going to be killed… snake.”
The source says he stayed in bed for a week out of fear of being shot.
The Post also obtained a seven-minute phone call in which a “leading member” of the Somali community in Minneapolis instructed someone speaking against Omar to publicly recant and instead issue a statement of support for her ahead of the midterms.
The source refused but said he felt pressured to avoid further vilification in the community.
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There have been long-running allegations that Omar fraudulently married her brother in 2009 to help him obtain citizenship.
The Post notes that only a handful of people in the Somali community have been willing to speak publicly about the relationship since the claims first surfaced years ago.
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