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Note: Video included at link. SNIPPET: "Now, law enforcement officials appear increasingly concerned Al-Shabaab members are trying to come back to America. But these members aren't disenchanted young men like Hassan, seeking to escape the terrorists' hold. Rather, the concern is that they are returning either to recruit more members or perhaps to plot attacks here." SNIPPET: "Al-Shabaab represents a "threat to the whole nation, all of the world," Ahmed told the IPT. "Everywhere they could recruit somebody they will try – Europe, North America, Australia, Africa…And they want to disrupt world peace." Ahmed warned that Al-Shabaab's main focus in...

St. Paul, Minn. — Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison said the U.S. government is trying to ensure the safe return of some of the young Somali-American men believed to be fighting with a terrorist group in their homeland. Ellison said he has been included in classified briefings about efforts to bring the missing men back to the Twin Cities. At least four Somali-American men from Minnesota who left to fight in the Horn of Africa have died there in recent months. One of youngest, a skinny teenager from Minneapolis named Burhan Hassan, was trying to leave the fighting and make his...

He was a slight and sickly teen, nearsighted and, reportedly, confined to a room away from the fighting that raged throughout the city. But the reported death last week of Burhan Hassan, the second Minneapolis man of Somali descent believed to have died in Somalia, has jolted his family and the Twin Cities Somali community. Hassan, who should have graduated from Minneapolis Roosevelt High School last weekend, was reportedly killed in Mogadishu, Somalia's largely lawless capital. He is one of up to 20 local men and boys of Somali descent to have disappeared over the past two years. Their disappearance...

Somalis in U.S. draw FBI attention War at home seen as lure The FBI is expanding contacts with Somali immigrant communities in the U.S., especially in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, fearing that terrorists are recruiting young men for suicide missions in their homeland. FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson, spokesman for the Twin Cities FBI field office, described the effort as community outreach. Many members of the Somali community are concerned over disappearances, he said.

April 01, 2009 Relatives Of Missing Minnesota Somalia Americans Use Ties To Homeland In Search Via Terror Free Somalia Interesting tidbit: "Actually, it's very tough [for] law-enforcement agencies, especially the FBI, to go back and get information from Somalia," Ahmed(Osman Ahmed, a distant uncle of missing 17-year-old Burhan Hassan) said. "But as Somalis, we know each other, we have a tribe over there, we have friends, we are connected to the Somali government because we supported it. So we are trying in any way we can to get information." Yes, they would have a in so to speak. Further reading...