Just like in the UK we are seeing more of our citizens joining the Islamic jihad. To try and combat this the FBI has launched a nationwide investigation. Maybe they should start here.
FBI concerned about young men recruited for terrorism
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
By CHRIS INGALLS / KING 5 News
SEATTLE – Sources tell KING 5 News that Seattle FBI agents are now working on a nationwide terrorism investigation.
They're concerned that young men are being recruited in the United States to join the Jihad overseas.
The FBI has confirmed some cases of young men traveling to the East African nation of Somalia to join al Qaeda-sponsored groups there.
One of the cases they're looking at includes a man killed in fighting in Somalia last year – an American citizen from Seattle.
Ruben Shumpert was a convert to radical Islam whose anti-American rhetoric and quest for guns brought him to the attention of the Seattle FBI in 2004.
Agents raided his south Seattle barbershop and arrested a group of men in a potential terrorism case.
Those people later pleaded guilty to counterfeiting, but Shumpert who was free on bond never showed for sentencing.
Last year he was listed among the dead in a U.S.-sponsored rocket attack near Mogadishu - the capital of war-ravaged Somalia.
Muslim extremists are fueling the fighting and now the investigation into Shumpert's apparent death has taken on new urgency because at a Seattle mosque – and others in the Minneapolis area – at least a dozen Somali families report young men who have vanished.
In several cities the FBI is investigating whether young Somali Americans have traveled back to their native country to fight.
Minneapolis college student Shira Ahmed killed more than two dozen people in Somalia in October and became the first suicide bomber radicalized in the U.S., according to the head of the FBI.
"We certainly believe that he was recruited here in the United States and we do believe there may have been others that have been radicalized as well," said Robert Mueller, FBI director.
The head of the Seattle Somali Community Center didn't want to speak to KING 5 on camera, but says she is not aware of anyone who has reported a missing family member.
A federal justice source also says agents haven't turned up firm evidence that anyone other than Shumpert traveled from Seattle to fight. However, with the fourth largest Somali community in the country here, agents are trying to build their rapport with that community.
Of course, the concern is that these extremists are U.S. citizens that could bring the violence back here.
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