Terror Free Somalia Foundation: A Mystery of Violence

As the FBI investigates the possibility of a terrorism “recruitment network” in Seattle, the local Somali community struggles to understand why young men would return to a country they never knew.

One winter day two years ago, the phone rang in a West Seattle townhouse appointed with a thick carpet and wall hangings featuring Arabic script. It was 23-year-old Abdifatah Yusuf Isse phoning home with some surprising news. His family thought he was visiting his girlfriend in Minneapolis during an extended break from studying economics at Eastern Washington University. In fact, he revealed, he was calling from Somalia.

Isse didn't know exactly where he was, he told his mother, Amina Ali. It was some campsite in the woods, where he was being kept up all night by the sound of hyenas and his fear of snakes.He said he wanted to leave, but was stuck. The people who had lured him there with a free ticket and a chance to visit a homeland he hadn't seen since he was 8 had confiscated his passport.Ali considers her son, essentially, to have been kidnapped. The federal government, however, views him as having participated in terrorism.The people who flew him to Somalia were operatives of al-Shabaab, an extremist Islamic group backed by Al Qaeda that has kept the country in a prolonged state of violent chaos. Isse stayed at an al-Shabaab safe house when he got to Somalia, was issued an AK-47 assault rifle, and helped build a training camp for a week or two before sneaking out and finding relatives in nearby towns.He returned to the United States the following spring. Five months later, Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali American who had traveled with Isse to the al-Shabaab camp, drove an explosive-laden Toyota truck into a government office in northern Somalia as part of a coordinated string of suicide bombings that day that killed 20 people. U.S. authorities began investigating Ahmed's peers, and this past February they arrested Isse at Sea-Tac Airport as he was about to board a flight back to Somalia. He said he was going to work for an uncle there.Isse has since pled guilty to a charge of providing material support to terrorists, and is in jail in Minneapolis awaiting sentencing. His attorney declines to discuss details of the case, saying he is forbidden to by court orders sealing much of the relevant information due to an ongoing federal investigation.Isse is cooperating with that investigation, which has discovered approximately 20 young Somali Americans who in the past three years have traveled back to their country of birth to become entangled with al-Shabaab. At a press conference in Minneapolis last month announcing the indictment of eight of these men, federal authorities stressed the danger of this first wave of homegrown terrorists. (Last week came news of a second wave, with the arrest of five young Americans in Pakistan suspected of plotting terrorism in Afghanistan.). I asked..you ....To read the rest of the piece...http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/a-mystery-of-violence/1

some background

Al-Shabaab rebels seize town close to Kenyan border

Al-Shabab Terrorist says they will attack Israel

Al-Qaeda, Somali rebels cooperate: AU commander.Al-Qaida-Linked Militants Capture Key Somali Town
Somali training camps fuel threat of attacks on US
Terrorism probe casts scrutiny on Minneapolis' Somali immigrant enclave
Hawiye clan Using Religion for Political Purpose
Deadly journey: Minneapolis to Mogadishu

Sources say local man supported al-Shabaab Terrorist