Reuters/Washington
The US homeland security chief said yesterday he takes seriously an apparent threat by Somali-based Islamist militants against prominent shopping sites in the West including the Mall of America in Minnesota and urged people there to be careful.
Homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson was reacting to a video attributed to Al Shebaab appearing to call for attacks on Western shopping areas, specifically mentioning Mall of America, the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, London’s Oxford Street and sites in Paris.
Mall of America and West Edmonton Mall issued statements saying they were implementing extra security measures.
“This latest statement from Al Shebaab reflects the new phase we’ve evolved to in the global terrorist threat, in that you have groups such as Shebaab and ISIL publicly calling for independent actors in their homelands to carry out attacks,” Johnson told the CNN program ‘State of the Union’, using an acronym for the militant group Islamic State.
Staff sergeant Brent Meyer of Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police said authorities are looking into the video but “there is no evidence at this time of any specific or imminent threat to Canadians”. A spokesman said London police were aware of the video and were assessing it.
Asked about the threat to Mall of America, one of the world’s largest shopping complexes, Johnson said: “Anytime a terrorist organisation calls for an attack on a specific place, we’ve got to take that seriously.” He advised people going to the Mall of America to be particularly careful.
Minnesota is home to a sizeable Somali population. US law enforcement officials have been concerned about the potential for radicalisation among some of the community.
A Minnesota man was indicted last week on charges of conspiring to support Islamic State and lying to federal agents investigating recruitment by militant groups.
Prosecutors said dozens of people from the Minneapolis-St Paul area, many of them Somali-Americans, have travelled or attempted to travel overseas to support groups such as Islamic State or Al Shebaab since 2007.
“I’m very concerned about the serious potential threat of independent actors here in the United States. We’ve seen this now in Europe. We’ve seen this in Canada,” Johnson said.
Mall of America is a large private mall in Bloomington, Minnesota, that has about 40 million visitors a year, and contributes nearly $2bn in annual economic activity to the state of Minnesota, according to its website.
The West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, gets about 30.8mn visitors a year and has the world’s largest parking lot, according to its website. Oxford Street is one of London’s busiest shopping areas, home to several large department stores.
Al Shebaab claimed responsibility for an attack on a high-end Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya in 2013 that killed 67 people, raising fears about the safety of malls around the world.
Security officials in Canada have been on alert in the wake of two attacks by Muslim converts last year including a gunman who attacked Canada’s Parliament in October, fatally shooting a soldier at a nearby war memorial.
Inside the Mall of America on Sunday, where there were no visible signs of enhanced security, Nick Disbrowe, 23, said he was not entirely surprised when told about the videotape released by Al Shebaab.
“If anyone is going to target anything, it’s the Mall of America,” he said.
Senior Republican senators said they expected Congress will avoid a shutdown over the department of homeland security, which faces a partial shutdown on February 27 amid a GOP push to roll back president Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson pressed lawmakers to resolve the deadlock, expressing frustration at what he described as finger-pointing between House and Senate lawmakers over who is to blame if Congress fails to enact a spending bill to keep the department running.
“First of all, it’s absurd that we're even having this conversation about Congress’s inability to fund homeland security in these challenging times,» Johnson said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Johnson noted that if lawmakers allow a funding lapse, the department would have to furlough some 30,000 employees and others working in such areas as aviation security and maritime security would be forced to come to work without a paycheck, as well as halt DHS support for state and local law enforcement.
House Republicans had passed a budget bill that would reverse some of President Barack Obama’s immigration initiatives, which shielded undocumented immigrants from deportation, but senate Democrats have blocked the senate from considering that bill in three separate votes.
Moderate Republican senators said they think a shutdown can be avoided by focusing on challenging the Obama adminstration’s immigration policies in the courts.
John McCain, chair of the senate armed services committee and member of the homeland affairs committee, said on CBS program Face the Nation he thinks a shutdown will be avoided this week if Republicans focus on a legal strategy on immigration.
“I think that’s the best way we can resolve this,” he said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate appropriations committee, echoed McCain’s statement on the ABC This Week program.
“I hope my house colleagues will understand our best bet is to challenge this in court. That if we don’t fund the department of homeland security, we’ll get blamed as a party,” he said.
House Republicans have said Obama would take the blame for jeopardising national security if DHS funds are cut off. Some conservatives have downplayed the consequences, saying there would be no interruption in the agency’s critical protective missions.
Visitors pose for a family photograph in front of an entrance to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.
