The
FBI’s Minneapolis bureau is looking into reports that a second American
citizen from the area was killed fighting with the Islamic State as it
works to find out whether the group is actively recruiting Muslims in
the Twin Cities region.
“We’re aware
of media reporting and social-media activity that a second American
citizen has been killed in Syria. We don’t have any details to confirm,”
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday about Muhumed.
The FBI is
also urgently trying to determine if there are Islamic State members on
the ground in Minneapolis seeking to recruit men to join the militants
in Iraq and Syria.
“If there are (recruiters) on the ground here … we want to hold these people to account,” Loven said.
In recent
years, the office has made several arrests of people suspected of
recruiting about two dozen young Somali-Americans to travel to Somalia
to fight for Al Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate. At least three of those
recruits died while carrying out suicide bombings targeting African
Union troops in Somalia in 2009 and 2011.
While those travelers had family connections to Somalia, the new crop has no such connection to Syria, Loven said.
With its
flashy propaganda videos and growing presence on social media, the
Islamic State has been able to recruit at least 100 people from the
Unites States, including some Minnesotans.
“We have
been privy to some videos which have directly targeted youths here in
Minneapolis, and the quality of the videos have improved extensively,”
Loven said.
Loven said
the targeted messages are working: An estimated 20-25 Minnesotans left
to fight for Al Shabaab, and a handful have left to join the Islamic
State, including McCain.
FBI agents
are trying to understand the logistics of how those recruited are
traveling abroad and being funded, Loven said, and talking to community
members to determine who is most susceptible to such radicalization.
“Typically,
travelers seem to be disaffected, isolated, withdrawn,” he said. “So
we’re asking for assistance within the (Somali) community to identify
those who may have those characteristics and may be most vulnerable to
the messaging of radicalization.”
Thousands of
foreign fighters from at least 50 countries have traveled to fight in
Syria, according to State Department. Islamic State militants have
attracted fighters from at least two dozen countries, according to
terrorism experts.
While
Jihadist propaganda plays a role, the Somali refugee community in the
Twin Cities has been especially vulnerable to radical recruitment.
That’s in
part because of difficulties experienced by Somalis who were pushed out
of their country with little of the preparation of typical immigrants,
and who sometimes find themselves unable to adapt, and with access to
radical ideologies, says Ahmed Samatar, a Somali-American professor of
international political economics at Macalester College in St. Paul.
Most
Somali-Americans are concerned with day-to-day life, their careers and
their children’s welfare, but “there are those who might slip and find
it difficult and alienating and can’t make it,” Samatar said. “They
become marginal, and this warrior life becomes how some try to
de-marginalize themselves and become somebody, part of some new group.”
Terrorist
recruiters who claim to be fighting for a greater cause can make such
young people “feel they are making a new kind of history,” Samatar said.
Countering such recruitment should start in “places of worship, mosques in this case,” he said.
These “ought
to be places that inculcate ideas of citizenship, civic
responsibility,” he said. “The imam should continue to communicate the
importance of the antithesis of this warrior culture.”
Mosques should develop a sense of civic duty “rather than ideas of alienation,” he said.
Muhumed —
who fathered nine children with three women in the Minneapolis area
before finding religion and joining Islamic State militants in Syria —
described his religious motivations through Facebook, according to a
profile about him published by Minneapolis Public Radio in June.
In January,
Muhumed posted a photograph of himself on Facebook with a Quran in one
hand and a rifle in the other. In a post, he wrote that the militant
group is “trying to bring back the khilaafa,” a reference to an Islamic
empire, and that “Allah loves those who fight for his cause,” according
to the radio station.
When friends
and family urged him to return to the United States, he wrote: “Family
is not gonna save me frm (sic) hell fire because muslims are getting
kill(ed) and if i just sit here i will be ask(ed) in the (hereafter).”
