US/Somalia

Somali-American teenagers recruited by Islamic terror groups

Article published on the 2009-03-13 Latest update 2009-03-13 13:05 TU

An Al-Shabaab fighter in Mogadishu, 9 March 2009
(Photo: Reuters)

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says that young Americans have been recruited by Islamic terror groups. Philip Mudd, a national security official with the FBI told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that extremist groups have been targeting Somali-American youths, and recruiting them to commit terrorist acts.

“We are talking about 20, maybe more, young people, some as young as 17 years old,” said correspondent Donaig le Du in Washington, DC, adding that the American authorities suspect at least some of them are in Somalia, with the Shabaab Islamic militia.

“A few months ago, one of those young Americans blew himself up in a suicide attack in northern Somalia,” she said. “So there is a growing concern around here about those youths, who are American citizens, who are engaged in terrorist activities and come back here in the US and start some kind of domestic terrorism.”

About 200,000 Somalis live in the US. They began emigrating in the early 1990s to flee civil strife at home, settling mostly in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota

The FBI has started to monitor the community.

"This is a priority for the FBI," Mudd told the Committee. "We are looking at individuals who are sending kids in the wrong direction.”

“The irony is that the parents of those kids… risked everything in order to escape the war and political and violence and unrest in Somalia,” said le Du. “So they don’t want to be scrutinized or seen as parents of would-be terrorists.”

She explained that the Somali community, as one of the United States’ newest immigrant community, is particularly vulnerable.

“They’re still a very poor community more than half of them are under the poverty line, which of course explains that some of the teenagers are really in trouble,” she said.

Andrew Liepman, deputy director of intelligence for the US National Counterterrorism Centre, speaking to the Senate, stressed that the radicalised teenagers are the exception.

"We are not witnessing a community-wide radicalization among Somali-Americans," he said.

"I'm describing a problem limited to a small fraction of the community,” he added, saying the phenomenon has been observed elsewhere, including Britain and South Africa.