FBI Concerned About Somali Recruits from “Seattle Mosque – and others in Minneapolis

“In several cities the FBI is investigating whether young Somali Americans have traveled back to their native country to fight.”

FBI concerned about young men recruited for terrorism
nbc
Seattle FBI agents are now working on a nationwide terrorism investigation.
They’re concerned that young men are being recruited in the United States to join the Jihad overseas.
The FBI has confirmed some cases of young men traveling to the East African nation of Somalia to join al Qaeda-sponsored groups there.
One of the cases they’re looking at includes a man killed in fighting in Somalia last year – an American citizen from Seattle.
Ruben Shumpert was a convert to radical Islam whose anti-American rhetoric and quest for guns brought him to the attention of the Seattle FBI in 2004.
Agents raided his south Seattle barbershop and arrested a group of men in a potential terrorism case.
Those people later pleaded guilty to counterfeiting, but Shumpert who was free on bond never showed for sentencing.
Last year he was listed among the dead in a U.S.-sponsored rocket attack near Mogadishu – the capital of war-ravaged Somalia.
Muslim extremists are fueling the fighting and now the investigation into Shumpert’s apparent death has taken on new urgency because at a Seattle mosque – and others in the Minneapolis area – at least a dozen Somali families report young men who have vanished.
In several cities the FBI is investigating whether young Somali Americans have traveled back to their native country to fight.
Minneapolis college student Shira Ahmed killed more than two dozen people in Somalia in October and became the first suicide bomber radicalized in the U.S., according to the head of the FBI.

“We certainly believe that he was recruited here in the United States and we do believe there may have been others that have been radicalized as well,” said Robert Mueller, FBI director.

The head of the Seattle Somali Community Center didn’t want to speak to KING 5 on camera, but says she is not aware of anyone who has reported a missing family member.
A federal justice source also says agents haven’t turned up firm evidence that anyone other than Shumpert traveled from Seattle to fight. However, with the fourth largest Somali community in the country here, agents are trying to build their rapport with that community.
Of course, the concern is that these extremists are U.S. citizens that could bring the violence back here.

March 11, 2009
“Grand jury convenes in FBI terror case against Minneapolis Muslims, mosque”
FOX news
By Mike Levine

SNIPPET: “Federal authorities are looking to bring terror-related charges against one or more Somali-Americans from the Minneapolis area, and witnesses to the case have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury, according to a Muslim leader in the area and a woman who said she testified before the grand jury this morning.

For several months the FBI has been investigating about a dozen Somali-American men who disappeared from their homes in the Minneapolis area late last year and may have joined terrorist groups overseas. One of the men, 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, later blew himself up in Somalia.”

Last month the mosque invited the FBI to meet with community and religious leaders to discuss the missing men and other issues affecting the Somali-American community in Minnesota. Hurre said the FBI called this morning to say they are now “ready to meet.” A meeting between the FBI and the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center is scheduled for Thursday. Hurre said it will be the first meeting between the FBI and the mosque since federal authorities launched their investigation.

At a forum in Washington two weeks ago, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the trend of young men “radicalized and recruited” in the United States to take up arms overseas “in particular concerns us.”

“It raises the question of whether these young men will one day come home, and, if so, what they might undertake here,” he said.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security is set to hold a hearing tomorrow morning looking at Somalia-based terrorist groups, particularly the Al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab, and their efforts to recruit inside the United States. A top-ranking official with the FBI’s National Security Branch, J. Philip Mudd, and the Deputy Director for Intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center, Andrew Liepman, are scheduled to testify at the hearing.

March 11, 2009
“The U.S.-Somali Experience”
Counterterrorism blog
By Douglas Farah

SNIPPET: “Officials are still trying to assess the scope of the problem but say reports so far do not warrant a major concern about a terrorist threat within the United States. But intelligence officials said the recruitment of U.S. citizens by terrorist groups is particularly worrisome because their American passports could make it easier for them to reenter the country.

This represents a movement toward the “Europeanization” of the Islamist threat in the United States, where terrorists recruit among the disasporas in an adopted country (or where the young people are second generation and feeling lost between two worlds.) The recruits, with the requisite language skills and knowledge of how society functions, are far easier to hide plain site than foreigners would.”

Wild Thing’s comment……..
A recent study sponsored by the Center for Security Policy found that of 100 American mosques and Islamic centers and schools it examined across the country, “75 should be on the watch list” for inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons and anti-western literature.
Something important as well from ….Human Events
from Gary Bauer

“The waxing of radical Islam in America comes as the issue seems to be waning in importance with the Obama administration.
In the opening weeks of the Obama administration, the term “war on terror” has been all but abandoned by the State Department. Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano recently became the first DHS secretary to leave out the words “terror” and “vulnerability” from remarks prepared for delivery to the House Homeland Security Committee, focusing instead on the threat of natural disasters.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is obliged to talk often about terrorism. On her tour she offended Christians last week, this week she took aim at Jews. In the West Bank, Clinton sat down for an interview with a Palestinian Authority TV station. Clinton said she wanted to “connect up our two countries,” referring to the United States and an as yet not established Palestinian “country,”
All of this is taking place at a time when the government’s terrorist watch list has reached one million entries, up one third since 2007.
Keeping America safe from terrorism during his seven-and-a-half years in office after 9-11 was President Bush’s most underappreciated achievement. Now, with an American jihad possibly looming, we can only hope that it’s an accomplishment that President Obama can repeat.”