"We are sending people after you, they're going to put you in hospital and in a coma."
A man in Somalia who goes by Aardile said that in an online video. It was aimed at a Minnesota man who had been quoted criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar. Aardile claimed he had already ordered an attack on him. The man told the New York Post he stayed in bed for a week afterward because he was afraid he'd be shot.
He's one of several members of Minnesota's Somali community who told the Post about threats, surveillance and beatings aimed at anyone who questions Omar. Some of the threats came from as far away as Somalia.
One man said he was beaten after a popular Somali TikTok personality posted where to find him. "I got jumped by 15 people and was pepper-sprayed," he said. They threw him to the ground and punched and kicked him. Later, after his name appeared in the press, he was attacked again in Kenya. In a separate incident in 2022, another critic was attacked outside a restaurant and left with a concussion, cuts and bruises.
The TikTok personality said publicly why these people were targets. "There are people in our community who have snitched on Ilhan Omar," he said. He also said they "went after her father." Omar's critics weren't accused of lying. They were accused of snitching, which is what you call someone who tells the truth about a person they're supposed to protect.
Then there was the phone call. A man the Post describes as a "leading member" of Minneapolis' Somali community called one of Omar's critics. The Post heard the seven-minute recording. The caller told him exactly what to say: "I lied about Omar because we were arguing." He was also told to post a message supporting Omar before the election.
He refused. He told the Post he now fears being "villainized in the community."
"I feel very threatened for simply disagreeing with anything to do with Ilhan Omar," another man said.
What they've been talking about is now in front of a federal grand jury. In 2009, Omar married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. They separated around 2012 and divorced in 2017. For years, people in her own community have alleged that Elmi is her brother and that the marriage was arranged to get him immigration papers. Omar calls that "insane." On October 12, federal agents searched her Washington residence and seized her phone. More than a dozen grand jury subpoenas have gone out, some to her relatives. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro says there are "several investigations." Omar hasn't been charged.
These critics are the people who would know her family. They're also the ones being beaten, threatened and handed scripts.
Nobody has accused Omar of ordering any of it. When the Post asked her office about the threats, it didn't respond, and it hasn't condemned the violence or asked her supporters to leave her critics alone.
These victims don't have security details or cable news slots. They're Somali-Americans in Minneapolis who thought they could question their congresswoman like any other American.
When critics of other politicians are threatened, the editorial pages warn about the danger to democracy and a "chilling effect" on free speech. Omar's critics are being told to recant or end up in a coma, and those same pages have said very little.
One of the men refused to read the script he was given, and his congresswoman's office hasn't said a word about the threats against him.