Ahmednur Ali's family fled the chaos and violence of their East African homeland Somalia in the 1990s, eventually making their way to Minnesota like thousands of their compatriots.
While many of the estimated 32,000 Somalis who settled in the state have struggled to adapt, Ali flourished. By age 20, he had blazed a path to Minneapolis' Augsburg College, where he played soccer, studied political science and aspired to a political career modeled on President Barack Obama's.
He was shot and killed last September outside a busy community center where he worked part-time as a youth counselor, and prosecutors said the 16-year-old accused of killing him was part of a gang.
Ali was one of seven Minneapolis-area Somali men killed over a 10-month period, and authorities believe all were killed by fellow Somalis. Police say it's too simple to tie all the killings to Somali gangs, which have lured hundreds of young community members to their ranks in recent years.
| Is that because they don't have a handle on gang activity, or because they're afraid to speak out about gangs in a Muslim immigrant community? |
Those in the insular community willing to speak out, however, disagree.
"It was all gang activity, totally, 100 percent," said Shukri Adan, a former Somali community organizer who estimated in a 2007 report for the city that between 400 and 500 young Somalis were active in gangs. "The police don't want to say that but everybody else knows that." |