Former Washington D.C. cab driver has been added to the FBI’s list of Most Wanted persons.

The FBI on Thursday added a former taxi driver from northern Virginia to its list of most-wanted persons, saying he was a recruiter for the al-Shabab group in Somalia.
An arrest warrant, originally issued in February, was unsealed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria for Liban Haji Mohamed, 29, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Somalia.
He is the older brother of Gulet Mohamed, who for the past four years has been challenging his placement on the government’s no-fly list, the attorney representing the younger Mohamed, Gadeir Abbas, told The Associated Press.
A hearing on Gulet Mohamed’s case is scheduled in federal court in Alexandria on Friday.

Abbas said Liban Mohamed aggressively advocated on his younger brother’s behalf when Gulet Mohamed was detained in Kuwait several years ago and barred from returning to the U.S., and that the FBI began to harass him as a result. He said his family suspects he went into hiding to avoid the harassment.
‘Al-Shabab has killed Liban’s uncle and imprisoned his cousins,’ Abbas said. ‘His family believes the allegations have no basis in fact.’
FBI spokeswoman Lindsay Ram said in an email late Thursday that the FBI had no comment on Abbas’ allegations.
Liban Mohamed is charged with providing material support to al-Shabab. Additional court records detailing the charges against him in federal court remained under seal Thursday.
He is now one of 31 people on the FBI’s list of most wanted people.
The FBI believes Liban Mohamed left the U.S. in July 2012 for East Africa. He lived in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County prior to that, working as a taxi driver. The FBI says he is a key target because his knowledge of the nation’s capital could help Al-Shabab plot an attack here.
‘It is important for us to locate Mohamed because he has knowledge of the Washington, D.C., area’s infrastructure such as shopping areas, Metro, airports, and government buildings,’ said Carl Ghattas, special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. ‘This makes him an asset to his terrorist associates who might plot attacks on U.S. soil.’

Abbas said the timing of the FBI’s announcement is an attempt to influence a judge to toss out a lawsuit that Gulet Mohamed filed against the government challenging his placement on the no-fly list. The government is seeking to have the case tossed out, in part because it says it would be forced to divulge state secrets if forced to defend the lawsuit.
‘We would question the timing of the FBI’s placement of Liban on the most-wanted list on the day before a major hearing on the government’s authority to maintain the no-fly list,’ Abbas said in a telephone interview.
Gulet Mohamed, an Alexandria resident and also naturalized U.S. citizen, was 19 when he was detained by Kuwaiti authorities in 2011. He has said that he was beaten and interrogated at the behest of the U.S. and denied the right to fly home. U.S. authorities allowed Mohamed to fly home after he filed a federal lawsuit, but Mohamed says he remains on the list without justification.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk