Somalia's Shebab 'radicalising Western youths'

SYDNEY — Somalia's Shebab Islamist group has growing links with Al-Qaeda and poses a potential threat to foreign interests by radicalising Western youths, a leading expert warned on Tuesday.
Raffaello Pantucci said Somali youths in the United States, Britain and elsewhere were being drawn to the conflict in their homeland before returning to the West. "The danger is that once trained and inspired by conflict on the battlefield, these young men might then return home and become the cause of further trouble," he wrote in a paper for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "As has been shown before, radicalised young men do not always need an outside commandment to reach the conclusion that they should carry out action." Australia listed Shebab as a terrorist organisation in August after five men, some with links to Somalia, were charged with planning a deadly suicide assault on a Sydney army barracks. The hardline group is engaged in a military offensive against Somalia's internationally backed government, although it denied any connection to the alleged plot. Last month it proclaimed its allegiance to Osama bin Laden in a video documentary, underlining Al-Qaeda's growing ideological influence among Somali Islamists.more..http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gxDcuPL2EiYHsZ50mESfe7qLconA