Muslim activist in Minnesota struggles as one-man counter against lure of terrorism

MINNEAPOLIS — His afternoon meeting was an urgent matter of national security, but Abdirizak Bihi needed to borrow $10 for the gas necessary to get there. The tank in his old truck had sat empty for days, forcing him to ride around town in a dress shirt and tie on a borrowed girls bicycle with purple handlebars. Now he wanted to travel 10 miles down the freeway, and he wanted to move fast. He walked out of his high-rise apartment building and stopped a friend on the sidewalk to plead for a loan. “I promise it’s for a good cause,” he said, and the friend handed over a few bills. Then Bihi drove off to investigate his community’s latest homegrown terrorist.During the previous few days, Bihi, 46, had pieced together some clues that were equal parts surreal and familiar: Farah Mohamed Beledi, 27, had been a Minnesota kid with American problems who ditched classes in high school, joined a gang and answered to the nickname “Bloody.” He had gone to prison for stabbing someone at a soccer game and had come out two years later as a radicalized Muslim, spreading stories about the “United Snakes of America” and meeting other men at a Minneapolis mall to talk about jihad. He disappeared to Somalia and joined al-Shabab, an Islamist extremist group with ties to al-Qaeda and aspirations of attacking the United States. A terrorist Web site released an audio recording early this year with hints of Beledi’s Midwestern accent: “I would like to talk to my brothers and sisters out there in the West, or wherever you are: Brothers, come. Come to jihad. Die like lions.”

Then, in late May, a suicide bomber killed himself and three others in Mogadishu. Photos of the crime scene showed Beledi slumped facedown in the dirt, his military fatigues blown to pieces, his jacket still outfitted with the bomb’s trigger.One week had passed since the deadly attack, andnow Bihi was driving to meet with Beledi’s stepmother at her apartment in nearby St. Paul. Bihi is the founder, director and sole employee of a community-based counterterrorism program, and he has spent much of the past three years going to meetings just like this. The FBI and the Justice Department had come to rely on his help during investigations; he had been a star witness at a congressional hearing in March about radicalization among American Muslims. But as spring turned to summer, Bihi wondered whether the problem had grown too big for him.“More kids become terrorists, more families are broken, and nothing ever changes,” he said. He wanted to offer his condolences to Beledi’s stepmother and encourage her to cooperate with the FBI. But he had also come with curiosities of his own. How had this happened? Or, more troubling: How was this happening again and again?There have been 51 homegrown jihadist plots or attacks in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, according to law enforcement reports, and their frequency is increasing. Nowhere is the problem of radicalization so concentrated as in Bihi’s section of downtown Minneapolis, where about 10,000 Somali immigrants live in a collection of faded apartment towers bordering the freeway. At least 25 young men have disappeared from here to fight for al-Shabab in the past three years, and dozens more are being investigated, suspected of recruiting or fundraising on behalf of the terrorist organization. None so far have tried to attack in the United States, but intelligence gathered by law enforcement suggests that they will. read more
Jihad: Made in America