Minnesota Woman Jailed for 2 Years Over a Fake Sex-Trafficking Ring Still Can’t Sue the Cop Responsible
A police officer who had a woman jailed for over two years on false charges in connection with a bogus sex-trafficking ring cannot be sued, a court confirmed last week, because she was acting under color of federal law—a puzzling reminder of the inverse relationship between power and accountability in government.
Hamdi Mohamud’s legal woes stretch back quite a ways. As I wrote in 2021:Â
For years, St. Paul police officer Heather Weyker was swamped. She gathered evidence, cultivated witnesses, filled out the police reports, testified under oath—all in connection with an interstate sex trafficking ring run by Somali refugees. But perhaps most impressive is that she did all that while fabricating the same ring she was investigating, which resulted in 30 indictments, 9 trials, and 0 convictions.
In 2011, Mohamud, then just 16 years old, found herself swept up in that morass after a woman named Muna Abdulkadir attacked her and her friends at knifepoint. Inconveniently for Mohamud, Abdulkadir was crucial to Weyker’s sex-trafficking investigation that would later unravel. After a call from Abdulkadir—during which she reportedly informed Weyker she had carried out a knife attack and was worried her arrest was imminent—Weyker advised other members of law enforcement that Abdulkadir was a federal witness. She had information and documentation, Weyker noted, that Mohamud and her friends were out to intimidate Abdulkadir.
“The first part was true, but everything else Weyker said was false,” summarizes Judge David Stras for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. “There was no ‘information’ or ‘documentation’ that anyone was trying to intimidate Abdulkadir. Nevertheless, based on what Weyker told him, Officer [Anthijuan] Beeks arrested Mohamud and the others for witness tampering.”
The government would ultimately dismiss those trumped-up charges, but only after Mohamud spent 25 months in federal custody.
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