Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Among Minneapolis Somalis, relief over indictment of Terrorist Salah Osman Ahmed of New Brighton, Minn and Terrorist Abdifatah Yusuf Isse from Seattle

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Over the long months that federal investigators delved into the baffling recruitment of young men who left Minneapolis to fight with Islamic militants in Somalia, the city's Somali community grappled with the fear they would all be branded terrorists.
But this week as the FBI netted its first grand jury indictments in the case, many hope the arrests of two Somali men will spell the beginning of the end of an investigation that has wracked their struggling community. Minneapolis is home about 32,000 Somalis _the largest population of Somali immigrants in the U.S. — most of whom fled the Somalia in the 1990s to escape a brutal civil war that plunged the country into chaos. But in the last 18 months as many as 20 young men are believed to have left Minnesota to joinAl-Shabaab al-Qaida-linked militants who want to establish an Islamic state in the Horn of Africa country, which is plagued by an ineffective central government. Family members say at least three of the missing men are now dead. "The image of this community has been hit very hard the in the last few months," said Farhan Hurre, executive director of the Abubakar As-Saddique mosque in Minneapolis. His mosque fell under suspicion as a recruiting site for some of the missing men...more..http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hxxIll494mCkNePOmvWoI2CwBJ5wD99EFV500

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