Protesters in Minneapolis raise SOMALI flag after police kill suspected felon

Black Lives Matter and Muslim organizations led a protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota against the police shooting of a suspected gun felon who shot first. The protesters hoisted a Somali flag over a building at one point.

Hundreds of protesters marched in the city on Sunday, in a demonstration organized by ‘Black Lives Matter’ activists and Muslim organizations. They were protesting over the killing of Dolal Idd, 23, the son of a Somali immigrant. 

As Muslim community leaders addressed the crowd in Somali, some protesters raised a Somalian flag over a gas station, allegedly after taking down an American flag.

The gesture incensed conservatives. “What complete utter disrespect,” one commenter wrote. “Imagine raising an American flag in Somalia... you’d be tortured and killed. People who don’t value American culture and laws need to go back.”

Idd was shot dead by Minneapolis police last Wednesday. Body camera footage of the fatal shooting released on Thursday showed Idd firing at police after they stopped his car in what they called a “probable cause” weapons investigation. He was killed when officers returned fire.

Though the video footage showed Idd firing first, one Muslim activist told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he believed the footage to be edited and “inconclusive.”

There may be as many as 250,000 Somalis in the Twin Cities, having been settled there by US charities as refugees after clan wars plunged Somalia into anarchy in the early 1990s. Minneapolis is actually represented in the US House by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), first elected in 2018.

Six Minneapolis PD officers are currently awaiting trial over the death of George Floyd, an African-American man, during a botched arrest at the end of May. Cell phone video showed Floyd complaining he couldn’t breathe as an officer was kneeling on his neck. Protests over Floyd’s death quickly turned into violent riots in Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul, before spreading to nearly every major US city during the summer.

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