That is a question I asked last summer, here, when Andrea Elliot in a lengthy New York Times story on the missing Somali youth case reported that Maruf was thought to be THE recruiter. Funny thing is, Maruf, is believed to have been killed in Somalia within the same two or three day period that the NYT went to press with the story.
So, either someone was trying to throw off the investigation and gave erroneous information to the NYT and then “killed” Maruf off either in fact (sacrificed for the good of Allah) or in fiction; or suspicions arose about Maruf talking (bragging?) and he was ‘offed’ by Al Shabaab to shut him up. In either case, I found it interesting that Maruf is still listed among the living in the Press Release yesterday from the FBI.
If someone else (other than Maruf himself) told the NYT he was the recruiter, I would be grilling that person real hard.
See what his sister told RRW in a comment in July, here.
Now, visit Andrea Elliot’s New York Times piece on yesterday’s announcement—not a mention of Zakaria Maruf, a man who played a large role in her July story. What is up with that?
A final thought, then I have to get to work on some boring posts. I find it interesting that none of the reports on the Somali terror case ever mention how the Somalis got here in the first place. A reader unfamiliar with the refugee resettlement program would think they just arrived here one day. That is why I put this little explanation at the end of many of these Somali posts.
Hope springs eternal that one day a mainstream media reporter will actually inform readers about how we, the US State Department through many Administrations, selected these Somalis and brought them here.
For new readers :
The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing. That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon. Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.