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Home Front: WoT

Shaboob's Minnesota recruitment drive

2013-10-07

'Betray the US and join "the real Disneyland" of African jihad' Teenage boys in America's biggest Somali community are being urged to betray the United States and join "the real Disneyland" of African jihad, in a recruitment drive by al-Shabaab. Kenyan officials said some of the two-dozen young men who left Minnesota to join the al-Qaeda affiliate in Africa may have taken part in the Nairobi massacre. The FBI is urgently investigating whether any gunmen came from areas such as "Little Mogadishu", the centre of the Midwestern state's 32,000-strong Somali-American population. "It is our number one priority here in Minnesota," Special Agent Kyle Loven told The Daily Telegraph. "We consider it to be a very serious threat." Recruiters from al-Shabaab are targeting disaffected young men in the "Twin Cities" of Minneapolis and St Paul, which are blighted by gangs and high youth unemployment. A 40-minute video released online earlier this year, titled Minnesota's Martyrs: The Path to Paradise, promised would-be recruits a glamorous new life. It followed three young Minnesotans – Dahir Gure, Muhammad Al Amriki and Mohamud Hassan – from their ordinary lives to Somali training camps. "If you guys only knew how much fun we have over here," Gure told viewers at one stage. "This is the real Disneyland". Friends say Hassan was previously an unremarkable engineering student who spent much of his time caring for his 90-year-old grandmother. "They are being radicalised, and that's something we are attempting to thwart with the support of the greater Somali community, who are absolutely appalled," said Mr Loven. Abdirizak Bihi, a director of the Somali Education and Social Advocacy Centre, has worked to assist these efforts since losing his nephew, Burhan Hassan, to the recruiters. "We would never have guessed that our kids had been brainwashed and recruited," he said. Eight Minnesota men have been jailed in recent years as part of Operation Rhino, the FBI's inquiry into the so-called "jihadist pipeline" to Somalia. Earlier this year Omer Abdi Mohamed, a 28-year-old teacher from Minneapolis, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for recruiting local men for al-Shabaab. Two of his recruits were sentenced to three years, after escaping from the Somali training camp after only a week and claiming they did not know what they had signed up for. Most older Somali residents of Minnesota received asylum after fleeing their war-torn country in the Nineties. "The tragic irony here is some of their children and grandchildren have left the relative safety of the US to engage in the very thing their grandparents and parents were able to escape," said Mr Loven. Hate to say it but next time we should consider settling immigrants .. in Mauritania...

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Rep. Ellison says U.S. trying to ensure safe return of missing Somalis

2009-07-19

St. Paul, Minn. -- Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison said the U.S. government is trying to ensure the safe return of some of the young Somali-American men believed to be fighting with a terrorist group in their homeland. I don't suppose that means so they can stand trial for belonging to an international terrorist organization, does it? Ellison said he has been included in classified briefings about efforts to bring the missing men back to the Twin Cities. Which he promptly blabbed about to NPR ... At least four Somali-American men from Minnesota who left to fight in the Horn of Africa have died there in recent months. Hurrah! One of youngest, a skinny teenager from Minneapolis named Burhan Hassan, was trying to leave the fighting and make his way to the U.S. embassy in neighboring Kenya, according to family members. Awww... The heart [urp!] bleeds... They believe a fellow member of the extremist group Al-Shabaab shot Hassan to death when the group learned of his plans to escape. Tough luck, Burhan, next time pick your friends better. And was he too 'skinny' to pick up an AK-47? Congressman Keith Ellison thinks the U.S. should try to retrieve the Minnesotan men who may have been misled into joining Al-Shabaab and want out. Since they either immigrated here or were born here they've got a country. Too bad they were "misled" into further failing somebody else's failed state. "We can't have a knee-jerk emotional reaction," Ellison said. Why not? I can't think of any reason not to. They came here, then left to join the enemy. My knee's dancing its own jig... "We've got to have an intelligent reaction. If a young person says, 'I have been lied to. I don't like these people. I want to get away from them,' we should help them do that, as long as we know that does not create a public safety issue for Minnesotans and Americans." Because skinny youts with rifles aren't a threat ... Can't recall any skinny yoots who ran off to join the Nazis and then changed their minds being welcomed back with open arms. Ellison wouldn't offer more details of the plans, saying the discussions were classified. But he said the efforts involve private non-governmental organizations as well as government entities. A State Department official did not respond to requests for interviews. What NGOs? Hizb-ut-Tahrir? The Widows Ammunition Fund? Ellison, whose district includes the largest concentration of Somali-Americans in the country, said the U.S. government has a vested interest in bringing the men back to safety. I fail to understand what our 'vested interest' is other than making sure they don't kill Americans, and that doesn't include bringing them back to safety. The FBI is investigating how and why about 20 men left the Twin Cities to join the chaos and bloodshed of a homeland they barely knew. Somebody fired 'em up at the mosque. Somebody else signed 'em up. Somebody else arranged passage for them. Ellison said the U.S. should send a message to the young fighters. "If you've learned the truth about these exploitative organizations like Shabaab, who are so dangerous, then abandon them and then help tell the truth about what these groups are really all about," Ellison said. I don't think that's the right message. How about "drop dead"? How about "drop dead, and if you don't we'll make it happen?" The Minneapolis office of the FBI has encouraged any of the Minnesota fighters who have had second thoughts to find their way to "the nearest friendly diplomatic agency." "... before arriving in Somalia. Once you're there you're on your own. Foreveer." "If these men did come to a point where they wanted to return home, that they were disenchanted with the situation over there, tired of the fighting and wanting to come home, we'd certainly like to get the word out that they should do that," said FBI spokesman E.K. Wilson. "Or even if they just wanted to take a break. Or if they decided they don't want to jihad in Somalia but they'd rather do it in Afghanistan or Iraq or someplace else." But Wilson also added that the FBI remains focused on the investigation, "and that focus has not changed at all." "Yeah. We're focused like a laser here at the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude." Asking a fighter to simply walk away from Al-Shabaab because he had a change of heart is a tall order. Families have heard that the men are being closely guarded. Almost as if the brave lions of Islam don't quite trust their new recruits ... Mogadishu has been under siege in recent weeks as groups like Al-Shabaab vie for power. The U.S. has no diplomatic presence in Somalia; however the FBI has staff and agents in neighboring countries that are assisting in the investigation. At least two men with Minnesota ties were able to escape Al-Shabaab, back in December 2007. Court records released this week say Abdifatah Isse left for Somalia in hopes of fighting against the Ethiopian troops who invaded the country. Got his shooting iron and went after infidels. We're supposed to want him back? According to the documents, only after Isse arrived in Somalia, he realized he joined a movement connected to Al-Shabaab. At the time, the U.S. had yet to declare Al-Shabaab as a terrorist group. Isse and another Minnesota man were able to flee Al-Shabaab soon after arriving. "Xenophobic slippers, don't fail us now!" A friend identified the other man as 26-year-old Salah Ahmed of New Brighton. The friend said Ahmed told the other Minnesota fighters that he needed to seek treatment for his allergies. Then Ahmed and Isse escaped to Kismayo, and eventually returned to the United States. "Mom! I'm home! What's for dinner?" Now, the two men are back in Minnesota -- behind bars. ... which shows extraordinary good sense on our part... Authorities this week released indictments charging each of them with providing material support to terrorism and conspiring to kill people abroad. At least one of the men, Isse, is cooperating with authorities. A trial for Ahmed is scheduled for October. Sometimes I have a glimmer of hope for our government. They usually move quickly to extinguish it, but still the spark sometimes alights. But bringing the remaining recruits back to the U.S. isn't without risk. For us or them? John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel for the CIA, said the U.S. government is taking such a heightened interest in the case of the Somali-American fighters because of broader concerns on global terror. "These people are trained, perhaps over there. They become radicalized over there," Radsan said. "They are engaged in combat, and if those people can be put on that cycle, it's only another step before they might come back here to do bad things in the Twin Cities." There's a voice of reason -- note that he's a 'former assistant' general counsel for the CIA. Why can't we have a voice of reason within our government? Counterterrorism officials have said they have no evidence that the young men were plotting attacks on the U.S. So let the little buttercups go, it's not like they'd hide anything from us ... Congressman Ellison agrees that the U.S. government's first responsibility is to protect its residents. He says in order to be re-elected ... I thought it was to "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense" in that order? But he also thinks if the recruits pose no threat to national security, they should be allowed to re-integrate into the American culture they left behind. Not a chance. They screwed up when they decided life in the old country was better than life in America. Let them stay in Mog or let the Kenyans have them.

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Home Front: WoT

Minnesota men charged in Somali recruiting

2009-07-14

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) -- A federal grand jury has indicted two Minnesota men in connection with the recruitment of Somali immigrants to fight with Islamic insurgents in their home country. Big Viking fans I'll bet... Nah, hockey fans from their childhoods in the rinks of Mog ... Salah Osman Ahmed and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse are charged with one count each of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people overseas, the indictment states. The recruiting effort took place between September 2007 and December 2008, according to the charges. Ahmed also is charged with two counts of making false statements to investigators. According to the indictment, he told FBI agents that he had traveled alone on a flight to Somalia when, in fact, he and another person were going together "so that they could fight jihad in Somalia." Ahmed, of the Minneapolis suburb of New Brighton, was arrested Saturday, FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson said. It was not immediately clear whether Isse was in custody. The FBI has been investigating what appears to be a massive recruiting effort by the al Qaeda-linked Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab in immigrant communities in the United States. More than a dozen young men of Somali descent have disappeared from the Minneapolis area in recent months, and at least three have been killed in Somalia, community leaders have said. The latest, Jamal Bana, was confirmed dead over the weekend, his family said Sunday. The same day, Somalia's president -- a former member of the Islamist movement himself -- issued a plea to Somali-Americans not to join the fight in his country. "I am saying to those young men from abroad: 'Your families fled your home to America because of insecurity. You should not return here to foment violence against your people,' " President Sheik Sharif Ahmed said. Stay there and stiff the infidels on cab rides. Al-Shabaab has ties to al Qaeda and has recruited foreign fighters to join its battle to overthrow the Somali government, U.S. officials said. It remains entrenched in the northeast and in sections south of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, after fighting that has uprooted more than 200,000 people since early May, according to the United Nations. Wilson said the number of missing men believed to be in Somalia is "in the 10s," but their recruitment is "a significant concern and one that we're giving our highest priority." In October, Shirwa Ahmed, 27, a Somali-American believed to have been radicalized by al-Shabaab, traveled from Minneapolis to Somalia and blew up himself and 29 others. It was the first suicide bombing by a naturalized U.S. citizen, and it raised red flags throughout the U.S. intelligence community and sparked an investigation by the FBI. Burhan Hassan, a 17-year-old Somali-American high school student in Minneapolis, went missing eight months ago, around the same time as Bana. Last month, his family learned that he was killed in Somalia. Neither family has any idea why the young males left the United States, where they came as young boys, and Bana's family believes that he was being held against his will, said Omar Jamal, head of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis. "Only one time he placed a phone call [in mid-November], he didn't say much," Jamal said. "He spoke as if he was being held hostage. He couldn't be speak freely. They asked him to cut the conversation short." C'mon Jamal. It's long distance... Many of the missing Somali-Americans are believed to have left for Somalia when Ethiopian forces were still on the ground. Ethiopia invaded Somalia to push the Islamists out of Mogadishu in December 2006, but their presence in the country was an outrage to most Somalis and became a rallying cry for al-Shabaab. Ethiopian troops left Somalia this year, leaving Ahmed's weak transitional government to battle the insurgents.

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Home Front: WoT

Minneapolis: Somali-American returns from jihad, tail between legs

2009-03-22

A 22-year-old Somali man from Minneapolis believed to have been recruited by a terrorist group to travel to his war-torn homeland has returned to Minnesota, community leader Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said Saturday. He added that the recruit for jihad had a change of heart. Jamal wouldn't confirm the man's identity, saying that he and his family fear for their safety and are in hiding. Others identified him only as Kamal. Jamal also wouldn't say why the man went to Somalia or how he financed the trip, but said he apparently returned because "his expectation was not what he wanted when he went over there. ... I think he simply didn't like what he saw over there." Jamal said the man who returned to Minnesota had been recruited by a group called al-Shabab, an Al-Qaida off-shoot, and left Nov. 4 for Somalia, where he expected vocational training and study Vocational training? For what, dry land farming techniques with a concentration in Israeli-invented drip irrigation design? but encountered war and further indoctrination. "The mobilization of the jihad and what have you is different when they really go over there," Jamal said. Jamal said the man has met with FBI investigators but is not in jail. No, he and his family have gone into hiding. I'll bet the FBI knows exactly where. FBI special agent E.K. Wilson declined Saturday to comment about the development or the status of the travelers "because of the ongoing investigation," he said. Members of the Somali community were called to testify before Congress on March 11. Others have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in Minneapolis. Farhan (Omar) Hurre, director of the Abubakar As-Saddique mosque in south Minneapolis, said Saturday that he knows of at least 10 people within the Somali community who received subpoenas in the past two months. While FBI director Mueller never said where Shirwa Ahmed was influenced, much of the focus has been on Twin Cities mosques, and Abubakar specifically. In late November, an imam and youth director from Abubakar were prohibited from boarding a flight to Saudi Arabia. At that time, an attorney representing the mosque, the largest in the Twin Cities, said they were put on a federal ''no fly'' list because they and the mosque were connected by rumor to the missing men. Sources close to the federal investigation have said that Ahmed, along with some of the other missing men, including Burhan Hassan and Mustafa Ali, 17, of St. Paul, spent time at or had ties to Abubakar. Hurre, the mosque director, has said that he did not know Shirwa Ahmed, but that others at the mosque knew him and were aware that he had spent time there. Hurre said that mosque officials are still hoping to meet with the FBI to talk about the investigation and learn how they can help. I'm sure they are.

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Home Front: WoT

FBI tracks Somali Terror Links throughout US

2009-03-12

Minneapolis has become the focus of a wide-ranging FBI investigation into a terrorist group's recruitment of young immigrant men for service in Somalia's ethnic and religious warfare. The group, Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaida offshoot, is suspected of being involved in the disappearance of as many as 20 young Somali-Americans who have vanished from their homes in the Twin Cities and turned up with the radical Islamist group in Somalia. While cases like Shirwa Ahmed's and Burhan Hassan's have made Minneapolis the focus of the FBI's investigation, Somali youths have also been recruited in Columbus, Seattle and San Diego.

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Home Front: WoT

Minnesota mosque suspected behind Somali terrorism

2008-12-19

Mohamud Ali Hassan once told the Somali grandmother who raised him that he'd become a doctor and care for her. The Somali immigrant, who moved to the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" when he was 8, had good grades at the University of Minnesota and called Muslims to prayer at his mosque, where he also slept during the holy month of Ramadan. But on Nov. 1, Hassan disappeared, as have a dozen other boys and young men here — two days after another young Muslim from Minnesota blew himself up as a suicide bomber in Somalia. Hassan, 18, called his grandmother to say he was back in Somalia, where an Islamist militia is trying to take over the Horn of Africa nation. What he was doing there, he did not say. Now the FBI is asking questions, as are members of the Somali community. The Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center denies any wrongdoing, but many here suspect that the mosque and its imam are radicalizing their youth to become jihadists in an Islamic holy war overseas or perhaps even in the United States. "They are very powerful, whoever got into his mind and got him to do this," says Hassan's grandmother Fadumo Elmi, 83. "We were forced out of our country one time. We don't want to be forced out of here." Details of the disappearances are few, but what little is known is cause for concern, says Abdizirak Bihi, a community activist who represents six families of young men who disappeared in early November. Among them was Bihi's nephew, Burhan Hassan, 17, a high school junior. All were good students, had no problems with the law, Bihi says. All were raised by single mothers and spent a lot of time in the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center. The center is the largest mosque in the Twin Cities. Bihi worries it is preaching a radical Islamic ideology to vulnerable young men. Shirwa Ahmed, 19, who left in August with no notice to his family, was among five terrorists who blew themselves up Oct. 29 in an attack that killed 24 people in Somalia, Bihi says. "We are wanting the government and politicians to investigate who is responsible for sending our kids and we are requesting the American government to help us to get us back our kids." Bihi says. Other Somali immigrants worry the disappearances may foretell dangers for their adopted nation. "That kid that blew himself up in Somalia could have done it here in Minneapolis," says Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul. Special Agent E.K. Wilson of the FBI in Minneapolis would not say whether his agency is investigating the mosque. Bihi and Elmi said the FBI has talked to them and others about the missing. Wilson said the FBI knows that Muslims here have been going overseas to fight. "We're aware that a number of Somali men have traveled from around the United States including Minneapolis to potentially fight overseas," Wilson said. A lawyer for the Abubaker As-Saddique Islamic Center denied any involvement in planning or financing the men's travels or any political indoctrination. "The mosque has taken a position that it would never take a stand on any political issues," says lawyer Mahir Sherif in San Diego. "We do not support terrorism or any kind of suicide bombing or act of violence." He said federal authorities last month prevented the mosque's religious leader, Sheik Abdirahman Ahmed, from flying to Mecca. Yusuf Shaba, who writes about Islamic ideology and radicalism for the Warsan Times, a Somali-English monthly newspaper published in Minneapolis, says he decided to speak out about what he considers Islamic indoctrination at Minneapolis mosques because he doesn't want his sons to follow the same path he did. Shaba, 34, joined Al Ittihad Al-Islami (Islamic Union) at age 16 and was wounded at age 19 in Somalia. Al Ittihad was Somalia's largest Islamic terrorist group in the 1990s. Shaba says jihadists generally recruit young men from among two groups: those shunned by their families because they've turned to drugs, gangs or alcohol; and the sons of families who forbid exposure to Western culture and allow them to socialize only at the mosque. Shaba says he and his three teenage sons attended a program two months ago at Abubaker As-Saddique Islamic Center, where a former Somali warrior sat in a circle with other young people and delivered a passionate recitation of his experiences during the Somali civil war. Some mosques also screen videos about the war in Afghanistan and about Muslim victims of perceived injustices in such places as Nigeria and the Palestinian territories. "They give them all the grievances that Osama Bin Laden has," Shaba says. "They talk about nothing but jihad and it's the best thing that can happen to a Muslim." When the brainwashing is done and the teachers are confident students will do anything asked of them, the teachers give them tazkia, or clearance, to get more specialized training in the United States or abroad, Shaba says. "The people who trained us encouraged us to not get married, to sever our ties with our families, so that when the mission comes we won't worry about family." Shaba says similar activities occur at Minnesota Da'wah Institute in St. Paul, another mosque. Sheik Mahamud Hassan, the institute's imam, says nothing like that is happening as his mosque. "It's liars," he says. "I'm not missing any members." Elmi wrapped herself in her shawl and sobbed as she thought of Hassan in her one bedroom apartment in a Minneapolis public housing high rise. Outside, snow covered the parking lot and temperatures were below zero. They moved to the United States in 1996, when Hassan was 8 and after his father was killed in the civil war. Hassan was obedient, but after going to the mosque, "He was completely changed." "I thought the mosque would be a much safer place than the night clubs and bars," she said, crying. "I don't want God to curse me because I say something bad about the mosque."

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Africa Horn

Somali-American teens disappearing to Somalia as jihadis?

2008-12-12

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota--Last month, 17-year-old Burhan Hassan told his family he was catching a ride to school with a friend. He then vanished.His mother spoke to her son just a few days ago over the phone. To her shock, she says, he told her he was no longer in the United States. "Mom, I'm in Somalia! Don't worry about me; I'm OK," the mother quoted her son as saying. Details of how he got there and what has transpired in his life since his November disappearance are sketchy. His mother, who agreed to be identified only as Amina, says her son has clearly changed. "He was different," she said of his attitude on the phone. Hassan is one of more than a dozen young men of Somali descent -- many U.S. citizens -- to have disappeared from Minneapolis over the past six months, according to federal law enforcement authorities. Authorities say young men have also disappeared in Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; and Columbus, Ohio. "A number of young Somali men have traveled from throughout the United States to include Minneapolis to Somalia, potentially to fight," said FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson. The fear among the Somali community in Minneapolis is that their young men are being preyed upon and recruited to fight jihad, or holy war, in Somalia. Some have even called to tell their parents not to look for them. "Those I talked to were completely shocked and dismayed as to what happened. They were completely in disbelief," said Omar Jamal of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, based in St. Paul, Minnesota. The shock is magnified by what happened to one of them: Authorities say a 27-year-old named Shirwa Ahmed blew himself up in an apparent suicide bombing in northern Somalia in October. Other local Somalis have voiced concern that, because a large number of the men missing attended the same Islamic center after school, it could have played a role. Amina does not believe the center itself played a role but thinks there are certain people associated with it who may be involved. On Monday, representatives of the mosque, Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, held a news conference to address the issue. The mosque's attorney, Mahir Sherif, strongly denied any allegations that it is connected to the men's disappearance, saying the center "has not and will not recruit for any political cause." "I haven't talked to any of them [since the stories came out]. I haven't seen any of them fighting," Sherif said. "I mean, I would be speculating. I'm hearing what everybody else hears." Sherif continued, "It must be the Boy Scouts. I know those boys were all considering scouting, and you know how violent the Scouts are. They may be off earning their jihad merit badges. By the way, didya know we're the Religion of Peace™?"

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