August 16, 2008

Case Closed? Evidence: Online Threat NOT Made by Denver Cyanide Man

Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, a recent immigrant to Canada from Somalia, was found dead in a Denver hotel with a pound of cyanide a block from the state capital and a few miles and a week away from where the Democratic National Convention would be held. That in itself was enough to bring the FBI in to investigate the case and see whether Dirie had terrorist connections.

But when it was found that one "Abdirahman Dirie" had left a comment on a blog in favor of violence against Christians in Somalia, the speculation that Dirie meant to do harm in Denver took off like a wildfire. Here is what Dire wrote on a post at the now defunct Zot Media website describing the horrible murders of Christians in Somalia by the al Qaeda linked African Courts Union:

Please don’t talk shit , that man deserves what happened to him , simply because having the bible in one hand , and a bread in the other hand , is not a correct thing ,! Kill Them , Kill them , Kill them , that is my massage,!” Comment by Abdirahman Dirie — July 11, 2008 @ 10:33 pm

But what if the two--the Dirie posting online threats and the Dirie found dead--were not the same? Then the evidence for this being terrorism gone wrong is much weaker.

To get to the bottom of this I attempted to get hold of Vimto, the former proprietor of the now defunct Zot Media blog, and see if he could track down the IP left by Abdirahman Dirie. If the IP traced to Canada, we would be fairly certain that the two are one in the same person. The e-mail I found for Vimto was no longer working, but I also learned that he was a one-time coblogger over at Nuke Gigrich. So I also e-mailed Nuke and asked him if he could get in touch with Vimto if he had a working e-mail address.

He did. So, what did Nuke find out from Vimto?

OK all you internet sleuths, the IP address 193.251.135.88.

Which means that unless Saleman Abdirahman Dirie was in Paris in mid-July, that he is not the Abdirahman Dirie who left the threatening message at Zot Media.

A couple of things to remember here: Abdirahman is a VERY common Arabic name. The English transliteration here is of عبد الرحمن which is (if I'm getting this right) usually rendered Abdul Rahman or Abdel Rahman. And Dirie is also apparently a common Somali last name. Just Google it.

This isn't the last word on whether there is a terror connection to Saleman Abdirahman Dirie (I'm working on another angle here, thanks to Dale in Atlanta), but all those looking into his mysterious death (including law enforcement) should be made aware that the IP evidence seems to indicate otherwise.

And yes, I know that IP's can be proxies (although on a first glance, this one doesn't appear to be) and that if Durie was part of a larger plot that Paris wouldn't be out of the question. But that would mean Durie was part of a larger organization (which might help explain how he could afford the hotel he was staying at) which also would imply some kind of training. And if the theory is that this was some kind of "work related" accident, then how does that mesh with the fact that he died of cyanide poisoning? Poisoning yourself with cyanide isn't easy to do--unless it's on purpose. It's why you can buy the stuff over the counter.

So, yesterday I was scoffing at the notion that there wasn't some kind of terror connection here. Today? Not so much.

Thanks to Nuke for helping out on this.