By AMY FORLITI
Associated Puff Piece Press Writer

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Young Somali men in Minneapolis have gone missing in recent months, and some members of the Somali community fear the youths are being recruited to return to their homeland to fight with terrorist groups.

One of the men who disappeared from Minneapolis is believed to have killed himself in an Oct. 29 suicide bombing in northern Somalia, according to a U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. That official confirmed that the FBI and Justice Department were investigating.

Another U.S. law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities are calling it one of the first instances in which a U.S. citizen has acted as a suicide bomber.

The Oct. 29 bombings included a series of five seemingly coordinated attacks in the breakaway republic of Somaliland and in Somalia’s Puntland region. More than 20 people were killed.

"We’re aware of the circumstances in Somalia right now and the events of the Oct. 29 bombings. And we are aware that a number of individuals from throughout the U.S. and Minneapolis have traveled to Somalia to potentially fight for terrorist groups," said Special Agent E.K. Wilson, an FBI spokesman in Minneapolis. He did not confirm or deny whether there was an ongoing investigation.

Members of the Somali community in Minneapolis said small groups of young men have been disappearing from Minnesota over the last year. Anywhere from 15 to 20 have left Minneapolis in recent months, said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

"We know for a fact this is happening, but we don’t know who is doing it," he said.

Osman Ahmed, a Somali activist in Minneapolis, said his 17-year-old nephew is among a group of at least seven people who went missing Nov. 4.

The Associated Press is honoring Ahmed’s request to withhold the name of the teen for the youth’s safety. Ahmed said the teen came to the U.S. as a young child and was an American citizen, like the others who left that day.

Ahmed said his nephew was a high school senior and had a normal routine of going to school, going home then going to the mosque.

"He was a very nice guy," Ahmed said. "He was very clever. Very shy. Very cool."

On Nov. 4, he told his mother that a friend would pick him up from school, but he never came home.

"We started checking hospitals, we went to the police station," Ahmed said.

The family then realized that the teen’s U.S. passport was missing, and Ahmed said authorities found a flight itinerary showing the teen arriving in Nairobi, Kenya, on Nov. 5.

Within two days, the teen called his mother, saying only that he was alive, safe and in Mogadishu, Somalia, Ahmed said. The teen gave no other details and has not been heard from since.

"We are praying to see him one day," Ahmed said.

Ahmed, who has been talking with other relatives of missing young men, said the families received similar phone calls.

Some members of the Somali community in Minneapolis are concerned that the young men are being recruited to go to Somalia and fight. The impoverished nation on the Horn of Africa is caught up in an Islamic insurgency and has not had a functioning government since 1991.

"It has to come to an end right now," said Jamal. "It has to stop. … We have so many families grieving. We don’t want any more kids to get brainwashed and programmed."

Jamal and Ahmed said it is suspicious because someone is providing money and transportation for the men to fly from Minnesota to Africa.

"My nephew, he doesn’t have money for a ticket," said Ahmed. "None of these kids do."

Jamal said he hopes the situation isn’t a black eye for the state’s Somali community, which the U.S. Census numbered at more than 24,000 in 2006. Local activists claim the actual number is higher than that.

"We hope that this won’t be an issue where the community will be looked at differently," Jamal said. "Somalis at large are very peaceful people. … We don’t want the Somali community to be looked at as a group of suicide bombers."

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Check this out from Refugee Resettlement Watch

Now 40 Twin Cities Somalis are missing!

And, guess where they are recruiting?   According to a pair of stunning articles today, it looks like right in the good old USA.   Yes, that is right!   Remember those Minneapolis missing young men?   When we suggested in that post yesterday that we are breeding and raising Jihadists, whose families have possibly arrived in the US fraudulently through the Refugee Resettlement Program, we might really be on to something.  

No wonder the Department of Homeland Security put the squeeze on the State Department to shut the family reunification (P-3) program down.   Family reunification, we have learned previously, is the largest portion of our legal immigrant program.   I don’t think Somalis come into the US in any other way than through Refugee Resettlement (or I suppose illegally).

From Minneapolis 5 Eyewitness News:

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal law enforcement sources believe that a Twin Cities man blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Northern Somalia last month.

The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating whether Shirwa Ahmed had developed a terrorist recruiting network in the area.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS learned that Ahmed came to the Twin Cities in 1996 and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

More than a dozen young men of Somali descent, mostly in their 20s, from the Minneapolis area have recently disappeared, U.S. law enforcement officials tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. All are thought to be associates of Ahmed. U.S. officials suspect most of the young men have departed for Somalia to fight in ongoing violence there or to train in terrorist camps. Family members of the young men are said to be distraught, trying to figure to out what happened to them, sources say.

So far, the investigation has not uncovered credible evidence of a plot targeting the U.S. but American officials want to track down all these young men before they can say for certain what this is or is not…

The Minneapolis news story tells us that the terrorist group that Ahmed was involved with is Shabaab al Mujahideen.    And, what a coincidence, here is another article today from Fox News (Hat tip: Blulitespecial) about Shabaab al Mujahideen.

In the summer of 2007, a 28-year-old father of three from Houston, Texas, shocked his country when he became the first American ever to be convicted of receiving military training at a terrorist camp in Somalia.

Daniel Maldonado, an offbeat, outspoken young man who sported tattoos and dreadlocks, committed himself to wage jihad outside the United States and went to Somalia to receive training. It was there that he mastered the violent “arts” of homicide bombing, building IEDs and engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

Read on and consider that the chances are very very high that this convicted terrorist was resettled in the United States by the US State Department with the help of your tax dollars.    Remember we have resettled over 80,000 Somali refugees in the last 25 years.  More than half of those are here since 9/11!!!

I’m wondering if any of the good folks in the volags remember Jihadis Shirwa Ahmed or Daniel Maldonado?

So what do they want?

Shabaab’s ultimate goal, as articulated in an April statement, is to throw the West “into hell.”

Hint to Homeland Security, you need to now go to some of the hot Somali towns in the US and see if other Somali young men (the ones we have fed, educated, and taken care of) might have turned up missing.  For starters, try Seattle, WA, Greeley, CO, Grand Island, NE, Shelbyville, TN, Ft. Morgan, CO, Lewiston, ME, Columbus, OH and of course Minneapolis and Houston.   And, I almost forgot!   NASHVILLE, TN!

State Department: Possibly tens of thousands of Somalis in the US illegally