The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that Hanad Musse from Minneapolis, Minn., a 19-year old of Somali descent, pleaded guilty of charges after attempting to join ISIS.
Musse is not a lone case; over the past year there has been a string of Somalis arrested in Minneapolis and St. Paul for supporting the radical Muslim group.
Business Insider reported that violent extremism has bubbled up within Minnesota’s Somali community over the last few years. According to The New York Times, an estimated 30,000 Somali population live in Minneapolis, a city of only 400,000 people.
According to the office of Andrew Luger, Minnesota’s U.S. attorney, groups “like the Islamic state” have exclusively targeted the Twin Cities for recruitment.
“Since Al-Shabaab began recruiting Minnesota’s youth in 2006, the Twin Cities have been a focus of overseas terror recruiting by organizations like the Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant. This cycle of terror recruiting has exclusively targeted Minnesota’s Somali community,” said Luger’s office in a press release on Wednesday.
There were five other men in addition to Musse, who were charged with maintaining ties to ISIS.
“To be clear: We have a terror-recruiting problem in Minnesota, and this case demonstrates how difficult it is to put an end to recruiting here,” Luger said at a news conference. “Parents and loved ones should know that there is not one master recruiter organizing in the Somali community locally. What this case shows is that the person radicalizing your son, your brother, your friend, may not be a stranger. It may be their best friend right here in town,” he continued.
Last February, another 19-year-old, Hamza Naj Ahmed, was indicted on charges of trying to support ISIS. The Justice Department said that Ahmed was the fourth person from the Twin Cities charged, and he attempted to travel to Syria to fight on behalf of the radical Islamists.
Somalia-born Minneapolis Councilman Abdi Warsame said that if the government wants to stop young Muslim men from joining ISIS, they need to provide them with jobs.
“What my community, the Somali-American community, needs today is no less than a ‘Marshall Plan’ tailor-made to the community’s employment challenges,” Warsame said.
