U.S. scrambling to identify, locate recruits to radical Islamist ideology

U.S. scrambling to identify, locate recruits to radical Islamist ideology

Published 25 March 2015

 

Nearly 3,000 Europeans have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (ISIS), but social media and court records suggest just about two dozen Americans have made it to the Middle East to fight with the group. Another two dozen or so have been stopped by the FBI and charged before they could fly to Turkey and cross over into the Syrian territories controlled by ISIS.

U.S. law enforcement, with no clear understanding of how Americans are being recruited, are scrambling to identify U.S. residents attracted to radical Islamic ideology before those individuals try to travel or worse- launch an attack on U.S. soil.

Nearly 3,000 Europeans have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (ISIS), but social media and court records suggest just about two dozen Americans have made it to the Middle East to fight with the group. Another two dozen or so have been stopped by the FBI and charged before they could fly to Turkey and cross over into the Syrian territories controlled by ISIS.
U.S. law enforcement, with no clear understanding of how Americans are being recruited, are scrambling to identify U.S. residents attracted to radical Islamic ideology before those individuals try to travel or worse- launch an attack on U.S. soil.
Many American ISIS or Islamic extremist recruits are immigrants or children of immigrants with roots in Muslim countries, while some are recent converts to Islam. They come from across the country, but most are from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, home to the largest U.S. Somali-immigrant community. In recent years, more than two dozen young men with Somali roots have traveled to fight alongside al-Qaeda-backed al-Shabaab in Somalia. Now, more than a dozen men from this community have left or tried to leave to join ISIS.
Islamic extremist recruits from other parts of the country include a 47-year-old Air Force veteran; Michael Todd Wolfe, a 23-year-old convert to Islam from Texas with a record of assault and theft charges who was stopped at the Houston airport as he tried to traveled to Syria; and Shannon Conley, a 19-year-old woman who thought she could use her skills as a nurse’s aide to help ISIS fighters. She also hoped to marry a Tunisian ISIS recruiter whom she had met online.
The New York Times reports on Abdi Nur, a 20-year-old man who lived in Minneapolis before joining ISIS in Syria. Just after he traveled, his friend, 18-year-old Abdullahi Yusuf, was stopped on 28 May when he tried to leave the country to join Nur in Syria. Law enforcement agents were alerted after a passport specialist became concerned when Yusuf applied for an expedited passport and seemed vague about its purpose.
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.”