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Terror recruiter with roots in Minn. linked to Texas shooting
 [STARTRIBUNE] One of the first Somali-Americans from the Twin Cities to join a terrorist group overseas is a prominent online recruiter whose clout extends to a new wave of Minnesotans charged with conspiring to support Mohammed Abdullahi Hassan's most recent display of influence came a week ago when he was linked by Twitter to the shooting at a Texas event where artists depicted their version of the prophet Mohammed. Before the shooting, Hassan sent messages urging his "brothers" to commit such an attack and later praised the gunnies who were killed. His calls for violence from abroad highlighted the extent of his reach in the United States, which has been steadily growing since he left Minnesota in 2008. Hassan, known more commonly as "Miski," had already earned a reputation for his ability to stay ahead of federal authorities who want to silence him and others whose sophisticated use of social media is influencing new recruits to fight for the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In the Twin Cities, Hassan represents the first link between the earlier waves of Somali youth who fled the U.S. for terrorism to a current group of young men charged last month for allegedly trying to do the same. Hassan, who left as a 17-year-old student at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, was among the second wave of Somalis from the Twin Cities who first conspired in 2007 to fly to Somalia to join Al-Shabaab  ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... From 2007 through 2013, at least 23 men from the metro area fled the U.S. in four separate waves, forcing the FBI to launch a counterterrorism investigation known as "Operation Rhino." In 2009, Hassan was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to support terrorism. Today, he is one of nine Somali-American Minnesotans on an FBI most-wanted list of terrorists. Now believed to be fighting in Somalia, Hassan was in close contact with Abdi Nur, a Somali-American who managed to fly out of the Twin Cities last May -- a day after his friend, Abdullahi Yusef, was stopped by FBI agents from boarding a flight bound for Istanbul. Both men sought to continue on to Syria to join ISIL forces, according to charges. Those two cases are part of a wider conspiracy under investigation and are tied to the recent arrests of six Somali-American men charged with plotting to leave the U.S. and fight for ISIL. Posted by: Fred 2015-05-11 |
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