U.S. scrambling to identify, locate recruits to radical Islamist ideology
The FBI is now trying to figure out who recruited the two young men, questioning whether ISIS’ online propaganda was enough to lure recruits. “No young person gets up one day and says, ‘I’m going to join ISIS,’” said Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali activist who has worked against radicalization since his nephew left Minnesota in 2008 and was killed fighting for al-Shabaab. “There has to be someone on the ground to listen to your problems and channel your anger,” Bihi said. “Online is like graduate studies.”
A federal grand jury investigating recruitment has called many young Somalis as witnesses, and according to people who have talked to Yusuf, he said he received $1,500 for his plane ticket to Turkey from a young acquaintance who claimed he got it from a local man. Leaders of Al Farooq Youth and Family Center, the Bloomington mosque where Nur and Yusuf attended, have publicly accused Amir Meshal, a thirty-one-year-old mosque volunteer, of promoting extremist views.
“When they learned in June that this particular individual was spreading radical views, they had him banned from the premises,” said Jordan Kushner, a lawyer for the mosque. A complaint filed with the police speaks of “concerns about Meshal interacting with our youth.” The Times reports that a second local mosque made a similar complaint about Meshal in local media.
Meshal, an American citizen from New Jersey who currently has an appeal in a 2009 civil rights lawsuit in which he accused FBI agents and other American officials of threatening him while he was imprisoned secretly for four months in 2007 in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, said in a statement, “I would never suggest that anyone join ISIS or any other group that kills innocent people, nor would I provide money to do so.” Meshal claims he was studying Islam in Somalia when fighting broke out between the government and al-Shabaab. The U.S. government claims Meshal received weapons training and helped translate for leaders of al-Shabaab. His lawsuit was dismissed in 2014, but Meshal filed an appeal.
Yusuf has pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support for terrorism and faces a maximum sentence of fifteen years, but Judge Michael J. Davis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota agreed to a pre-sentence plan to send Yusuf to a halfway house with the support of Heartland Democracy, an education nonprofit in Minneapolis.
Mary McKinley, executive director of Heartland Democracy, said the group is trying to reintegrate Yusuf into the community and possibly give him a role in countering the radicalization of young people. “Ideally, Abdullahi will be able to tell his story in a way that is useful to young people who are frustrated and disengaged,” McKinley said.
Nur, believed to be in Syria, has been charged in absentia with supporting ISIS. The last time his sister, Ifrah, communicated with him on Facebook and an app called Kik, she made an emotional appeal telling him that “going to kill poor people is not the answer.” “Respond to me I love u and can’t live knowing this,” she added. He replied gently to her saying “if I didn’t care I wouldn’t have left but I want jannah” (paradise) “for all of us.”
