Thread: MN: Somali-Born Roosevelt Grad Pleads Guilty to Terror Acts

Originally published July 16, 2009 at 12:00 AM | Page modified July 17, 2009 at 11:44 AM

Somali-born Roosevelt grad pleads guilty to terror acts

A Roosevelt High School graduate, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, has pleaded guilty in Minnesota to terrorism-related charges in connection with the disappearances of dozens of U.S. Somali youths, some of whom turned up fighting with suspected terrorists in Somalia and at least one of whom became a suicide bomber, according to court documents and interviews.

By Mike Carter and Ian Ith

Seattle Times staff reporters


Somalis hope arrests lift suspicion

A Seattle man has pleaded guilty in Minnesota to terrorism-related charges in connection with the disappearances of dozens of U.S. Somali youths, some of whom turned up fighting with suspected terrorists in Somalia and at least one of whom became a suicide bomber, according to court documents and interviews.

Court records show Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, 25, a 2002 Roosevelt High School graduate and a former economics student at Eastern Washington University, traveled to Somalia to train with Al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based radical Islamist group that last year was designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.

His court-appointed attorney said Isse was likely being recruited as a possible suicide bomber.

He pleaded guilty to a single count of providing material support to terrorists — which carries a possible 10-year prison sentence — and has been cooperating with federal investigators in what the FBI has said in an ongoing investigation.

His mother, in an interview earlier this week, said Isse was a "good boy" who fell in with the wrong crowd while in Minneapolis.

Speaking in broken English without a translator, the woman — who did not want to give her name but acknowledged she was Isse's mother — said her son changed after meeting a girl in Minneapolis while on break from school.

Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, also has spoken with Isse's family and said Isse was approached by jihad recruiters at the Abubakar as-Saddique mosque, the largest Somali mosque in Minneapolis.

"These people came here and took these boys right under the noses of the FBI," he said.

Isse and another man, Salah Ahmed, were named in an indictment unsealed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, part of what the FBI has said is a widespread and ongoing investigation into alleged terrorist recruitment among Somalis living in the U.S., including Seattle.

Investigators say as many as 20 young Somali men from the Twin Cities area have disappeared in the past two years, and at least three of them have turned up dead in Somalia. They include Shirwa Ahmed, an American who blew himself up in a suicide bombing against U.N. and Ethiopian forces last October.

Federal prosecutors say Isse went to Somalia with another man in December 2007, that he stayed in Al-Shabaab safe houses, was given an AK-47 and helped construct an Al-Shabaab training camp.

After a couple of weeks, however, he decided not to stay and he and another Minnesota man left the camp. Isse stayed in Somalia to visit relatives. He was arrested at Sea-Tac Airport in March when he returned.

Paul Engh, Isse's Minneapolis attorney, wrote in documents that Isse "will not be the last defendant indicted" because of the recruitment done by those he trusted.

"Recruiting young men ... to blow themselves up while killing the innocent at a crowded marketplace is a definition of evil," Engh wrote in an unsuccessful attempt to reduce restrictions on his client while in jail. "And this recruitment happened at a place of worship."

Isse's mother, a devout Muslim who spoke from a tidy apartment in Southwest Seattle, said Isse attended Roosevelt High School and was never very religious.

Records show Isse enrolled at Eastern Washington University, a 10,000-student campus at Cheney, near Spokane, in January 2003. He stayed there four years and majored in economics, until he left in December 2007 without earning a degree.

Eastern's student body is about 20 percent nonwhite, including a lot of foreign-born students. And Isse wasn't any different from any other college kid his age, recalled Grant Forsyth, an associate professor of economics who served as Isse's academic adviser. His professors and peers knew him as "Abdi," and said he socialized easily with both foreign- and native-born students.

"No one is more surprised than I am," to learn of his arrest, Forsyth said. "My mouth was hanging open.

"If he had any concerns about the conditions in his home country, it never came across. It's really hard to imagine what happened between the last time I saw him and now."

Isse was a nice young man who expressed an interest in graduate school and aspired to work for the United Nations or the World Bank, Forsyth said. Like many undergraduate students, Isse had to be reminded to show up to class more often, Forsyth said. And as he progressed in the economics department, he struggled with the upper-level classes.

Cheney municipal-court records show he was cited in 2003 for being a minor in possession of drugs or alcohol and in 2005 for issuing a bad check.

Dave Meany, an EWU spokesman, said campus police were contacted about a year ago by federal agents who were trying to find Isse. But "at the time, he was long gone from campus," Meany said.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... ia16m.html

His mother, in an interview earlier this week, said Isse was a "good boy" who fell in with the wrong crowd while in Minneapolis.

Give me a break. Terrorists are not "good boys" who happen to hang out with the wrong crowd. Who keeps giving out visas to these people? No one wants them here. Stop all immigration from "axis of evil" countries!