FBI Watching Somali Muslims In Minneapolis

On election night last November, the outcome was wildly celebrated by Somalis living in Minneapolis, 70,000-strong, mostly refugees from their war-torn country. It is the largest Somali community in the United States.

But the evening was noteworthy for something else, too. That night, the latest in a line of young Somalis who grew up here, departed unannounced for Somalia itself, joining a civil war in a country few had ever seen and causing concern in the United States.

Hussein Samatar’s 17-year old nephew left without a word to his family.

“He was an A student,” says Samatar. “He has everything to hope for to attend any Ivy League school that he wanted to. Why he would do it is a mystery to us.”

Some 20 vanished last year – all American citizens – an exodus the FBI has noticed for a troubling reason.

“A man from Minneapolis became what we believe to be the first U.S. citizen to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing,” said agency director Robert Mueller.

The October attack by 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed killed 30 near Mogadishu, and there is alarm that the skills acquired abroad could be brought back to America.

“He could have done it here,” says Omar Jamal, a Somali advocate in Minnesota. “We don’t see anything that would have prevented him from doing this right here in the heart of Minneapolis.”

This much seems clear:

“It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota,” Mueller said.

The missing men all came from one local mosque, according to the FBI. But officials at the mosque deny that they play any role in turning young people into radicals, Reynolds reports.

Source

FBI Director Warns of Terror Attacks on U.S. Cities

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III today warned that extremists “with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons” to sow terror, raising the specter that recent attacks in Mumbai that killed 170 people last year could embolden terrorists seeking to attack U.S. cities.

At a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mueller said that the bureau is expanding its focus beyond al-Qaeda and into splinter groups, radicals who try to enter the country through the visa waiver program and “home-grown terrorists.”

“The universe of crime and terrorism stretches out infinitely before us, and we too are working to find what we believe to be out there but cannot always see,” Mueller said.

One particular concern, the FBI director said, springs from the country’s background as a “nation of immigrants.” Federal officials worry about pockets of possible radicals among melting-pot communities in the United States such as Seattle, San Diego, Miami or New York.

A Joint Terrorism Task Force led by the FBI, for instance, continues to investigate a group in Minneapolis after one young man last fall flew to Somalia and became what authorities believe to be the first U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing. As many as a half-dozen other youths from that community in Minnesota have vanished, alarming their parents and raising concerns among law enforcement officials that a dangerous recruiting network has operated under the radar.

“The prospect of young men, indoctrinated and radicalized in their own communities . . . is a perversion of the immigrant story,” Mueller said.
via Source washingtonpost.com.