Ann has posted numerous times on the radical American Somalis who went to join the jihad, and tonight I noticed this report in the New York Times, Militants Drew Recruit in U.S., F.B.I. Says.
WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said Monday that a Somali-American man who was one of several suicide bombers in a terrorist attack last October in Somalia had apparently been indoctrinated into his extremist beliefs while living in the United States.
The man, Shirwa Ahmed, was the first known suicide bomber with American citizenship. He immigrated with his family to the Minneapolis area in the mid-1990s, Mr. Mueller said, but he returned to Somalia after he was recruited by a militant group.
“It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota,” Mr. Mueller said, speaking at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. Minneapolis claims the country’s largest Somali population.
Mr. Ahmed was driving a vehicle laden with explosives that blew up in northern Somalia in an attack that killed as many as 30 people, according to news reports. His body was returned to the United States with the help of the F.B.I.
Federal authorities have said that Mr. Ahmed was one of as many as two dozen young men of Somali descent who had disappeared in the past two years from their homes in the Minneapolis area after being recruited by the Shabab, a militia that is suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda and that has waged a war against the Somali government.
Mr. Mueller suggested that Somali recruiting posed a serious issue for the F.B.I., which has sought the cooperation of the Somali community to try to understand whether the recruiting represents a threat.
“It raises the question of whether these young men will one day come home, and, if so, what might they undertake here,” he said.
Thanks for noticing, Mr. Mueller. But can the FBI really not figure out whether a terrorist organization recruiting young men in Minnesota represents a threat? I can save a lot of taxpayer money: Instead of seeking the cooperation of Somalis to find out, just ask me. I’ll tell you without all the bother: The answer is Yes. And the question is, What are you going to do about it?