Every day, visit us because it seems that some new bit of information comes our way regarding the Somali missing ‘youths’ saga. This is from a blog at the Christian Science Monitor. Admittedly I don’t know anything about how the FBI does its investigations, but it strikes me that from this account it’s haphazard (and that is a kind choice of words!)
We have theorized that when Homeland Security first learned that Somali (former refugees) were turning up missing in Minneapolis, suspected of returning to Somalia for terrorist training, that the FBI would be checking other cities for missing youths as well. Guess they are!
While pursuing our recent story about the shooting death of a local teenager, I stumbled into an active FBI investigation. One evening last month, more than 60 members of Atlanta’s Liberian community gathered at Clarkston International Bible Church outside the city, to discuss the shooting by a Liberian youth. Community leaders spoke: a school principal, a minister, a judge, the local police chief.
[….]
Two hours into the meeting, a pale, buzz-cut man, who’d slipped in partway through, stood and introduced himself as FBI Senior Special Agent Andy Young – “not the Andrew Young,” he joked, referring to the Atlanta civil rights icon. Crowd members shifted in their seats, and the event’s moderator joked that if the agent had said he was from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the room would’ve cleared out. This got a huge, nervous laugh.
We are your friends!
No, Agent Young said, he wasn’t there to bust anybody on immigration violations. He was there to dispel commonly held fears about the FBI.
But, we want something from you!
His agents would be visiting churches and mosques all over Clarkston to listen to the community’s concerns.
But friendship, he said, carries “reciprocal obligations” – so he had a favor to ask. Although this was a gathering of – “Liberians, right?” – from the opposite side of Africa from Somalia, he wanted to ask their help making contact with friends, neighbors, coworkers: Anyone who might be a leader of Atlanta’s Somali community.
He wanted information on the Somali community because “kids” are missing from Minneapolis.
Because Somali kids were disappearing. Not in Atlanta yet, that he knew of. But “six or seven high school kids,” former refugees resettled in Minnesota’s Twin Cities area, the largest Somali community in the US, had recently been recruited by an extremist group through a mosque there and sent back to Somalia to train as suicide bombers.
Now get this little juicy bit of information he revealed to an audience of 60 people he didn’t know.
“One child blew himself up last month,” Young said. “They flew his thumb back to [the FBI Academy in] Quantico [Va.],” fingerprinted it, and discovered he’d come to the US as a refugee.
Child! Child! Ahmed, the first American suicide bomber (that we know of) was 27 years old! And, do you remember that Minnesota funeral of the “remains” back in early December? I’m wondering, did they just bury the thumb?
“They’re still looking for those six other children,” said Young, “Their parents had no idea. They reported their kids missing.” If terrorists are recruiting teenagers in Minnesota, Young said, they could easily be doing it in Atlanta too.
Uh, Mr. Young, I think it’s possible some (more than six!) of the “children” were captured in Somaliland two days ago.