Topic: WorldNetDaily
The headline of Leo Hohmann's Jan. 3 WorldNetDaily article says it all: 'Refugee' named Mohamed sexually assaults disabled U.S. woman, media silent." It's time to fearmonger about scary Muslims again, as is Hohmann's job at WND, and to paint all Muslims in general, and Muslim refugees in particular, as potential criminals and rapists.
Actually, the headline is wrong in one key respect: Hohmann admits the "refugee named Mohamed" was convicted not of sexual assault but, rather, attempted sexual assault.
But it's the "media silent" part that Hohmann is really hammering this time around:
WND called the executive editor of Aberdeen’s daily newspaper, the American News, and asked why nothing has been reported on the crime committed by Mohamed. He said he had no knowledge of Mohamed’s arrest, trial or conviction.
“I’m not seeing it in our system, and I really don’t recall it,” said editor J.J. Perry when asked about the case Tuesday by WND. “I’ll have to talk to our court reporter. It might be we just missed it on the docket.”
The newspaper’s court reporter, Elisa Sand, did not attend the trial, WND was told by officials who were present on Dec. 20.
Nor has the case received any coverage from local TV stations in South Dakota or neighboring Minnesota.
Hohmann did not name any other instance where a case of attempted sexual assault warranted blanket media coverage.
The next day, Hohmann was in full attack mode against the Aberdeen newspaper for not hating Muslims like he does:
A South Dakota newspaper that failed to report on the case of a Somali man convicted of trying to molest a severely handicapped woman, changed gears Wednesday after being outed by WND and decided to publish a story about the crime.
The story ran on page three of the Aberdeen American News under the headline “Sentencing later this month for a man convicted of attempted sexual contact.”
But the newspaper left out an important detail.
The convicted sex criminal, 39-year-old Liban Mohamed, was a recently arrived refugee brought to the state from Somalia at the invitation of the U.S. government. He had been in the country only about a week and in Aberdeen only one day when he wandered up to a group home and tried to molest a 31-year-old mentally handicapped woman who was sitting outside the facility.[...]
WND contacted AAN Executive Editor J.J. Perry and asked why he omitted the information about Mohamed being a refugee.
“Because I don’t know that it was a fact he was a refugee. We weren’t there [at the trial],” Perry said, after which he was reminded that the state’s attorney, Christopher White, confirmed for WND that Mohamed was a refugee and that this information was offered by Mohamed’s own defense attorney at trial. It was part of the court record in the defense attorney’s opening statement.
Hohmann went on to rant that no picture of "the convicted sex offender" has been released ("South Dakota is one of the few states where mugshots of convicted criminals are not considered public record," he huffed), and went after a social-services group involved in resettling refugees for not addressing "how it could leave a man from Somalia, in the country for only a week, on his own to wander the streets looking for a vulnerable female."
Hohmann also complained that "The U.S. State Department and its federal contractor, Lutheran Social Services, have sent 939 Somali refugees to South Dakota since 2002, all of them being placed in Sioux Falls. More than 99 percent of all Somali refugees are Muslim." If this crime is the only one Hohmann can come up with in 14 years of Somali resettlements in South Dakota, isn't that a pretty good record?
Bizarrely, both of Hohmann's articles are illustrated with pictures of Somali refugee camps in Keny, which is nowhere near South Dakota. Apparently that's an acceptable substitute when you can't get a picture of the perp to reinofrce the otherness that's a key to Hohmann's anti-Muslim obsession.
