Two more guilty pleas scheduled in the Feeding Our Future Case

If all goes according to plan, guilty plea numbers 19 and 20 will be filed in the Feeding Our Future case next week.

We’ve learned during the course of the sprawling free-food scandal not to count our guilty pleas before they’re entered.

Both guilty pleas come from the nine-member Haji’s Kitchen group of defendants. In our numbering system, the Haji group includes defendants Nos. 31 through 35 and 54 through 57.

The lead defendant in the group, Haji Salad (No. 31), was apparently the subject of an unsuccessful deportation effort in 2020 on an unrelated matter.

Salad is scheduled to go to trial beginning November 4 with two remaining co-defendants in Federal court in downtown Minneapolis. Those defendants include No. 35, Farhiya Mohamud, and No. 54, Kawsar Jama.

No. 32, Fahad Nur, remains a fugitive from justice.

Three other defendants from the group have already pled guilty and represent Guilty Plea Nos. 5, 10, and 12 in the larger case. That leaves only two remaining from the Haji group.

Defendant No. 34, Sharmarke Issa, is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday, the 18th. You will recall that Issa was a two-time appointee of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as Chairman of the city’s Public Housing Authority. Issa resigned his post shortly after his involvement in the Feeding case was revealed back in February 2022. Issa was also a business partner of Defendant No. 6 in the case, Abdi Salah, another Frey appointee.

Defendant No. 57, Khadra Abdi, is expected to plead guilty on Friday, the 20th. You will recall that Abdi operated a tutoring company located adjacent to the Sambusa King restaurant in Hopkins, which is operated by her co-defendant Abdulkadir Awale, Defendant No. 56 and Guilty Plea No. 10.

The three defendants from the Haji group going to trial in November are due back in court on October 15 for a pre-trial hearing.