MN: Somali "refugee" suicide bomber trained in U.S

Again...if OBAMA had any courage and really cared about our nation's safety....we would suspend any/all refugee importations especially any from the Middle East....let the Saudis take them all in...we can't afford to do it and we need to stop acting like a bunch of chumps. LL

FBI to Focus on Immigrant Outreach After U.S. Citizen Stages Suicide Bombing in Somalia
By Alex Kingsbury
Posted February 24, 2009

Domestic radicalization may be the newest front in the ongoing campaign against terrorism, a reality underscored last October when a man from Minnesota traveled to Somalia and blew himself up in a suicide bombing.
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Shirwa Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was radicalized and recruited into a Somali militant group near his hometown of Minneapolis, according to the FBI. He then traveled to Somalia and was driving a truck filled with explosives during an attack in northern Somalia, making him the first known U.S. citizen to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing, said FBI Director Robert Mueller. Several of Ahmed's associates, also from Minnesota and affiliated with a Somali militant group, have left the country and are still unaccounted for, according to federal law enforcement and counterterrorism officials.

Mueller highlighted the Ahmed case this week in Washington, saying that better FBI outreach to immigrant communities will be key to foiling such plans. "The prospect of young men, indoctrinated and radicalized within their own communities and induced to travel to Somalia to take up arms—and to kill themselves and perhaps many others—is a perversion of the immigrant story," he said. "For these parents to leave a war-torn country only to find their children have been convinced to return to that way of life is heartbreaking."

These immigrant communities have become a top priority for the FBI, despite resistance and mistrust on the part of some of them. "Too often, we run up against a wall between law enforcement and the community, a wall based on the myth and misperception of the work we do," he said. "Oftentimes, the communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least. But it is with these communities that we must redouble our efforts."

His speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, about the FBI's role in thwarting global terrorism, also illustrated how much of a wake-up call the attacks in Mumbai were for the U.S. counterterrorism community.

Discussing the FBI's role in the investigation, he said the attacks underscored the dangerous reality that "terrorists with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons to maximize their impact."

The low-tech methods, high death toll, and substantial publicity make the incident particularly concerning, Mueller said: "How many other cities around the world could fall prey to such an attack? How many cities here in the United States?"

Mueller revealed aspects of the FBI's role in the investigation. Special Agent Steve Merrill, a legal attaché, helped coordinate the bureau's efforts, including interviewing witnesses and deploying a rapid response team. Mueller said that FBI technicians lifted fingerprints from an unexploded bomb and wired back together a smashed cellphone connected to the case.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/nat ... omalia.htm

washingtonpost.com

FBI Director Warns of Terror Attacks on U.S. Cities

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 23, 2009; 3:19 PM

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III today warned that extremists "with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons" to sow terror, raising the specter that recent attacks in Mumbai that killed 170 people last year could embolden terrorists seeking to attack U.S. cities.

At a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mueller said that the bureau is expanding its focus beyond al-Qaeda and into splinter groups, radicals who try to enter the country through the visa waiver program and "home-grown terrorists."

"The universe of crime and terrorism stretches out infinitely before us, and we too are working to find what we believe to be out there but cannot always see," Mueller said.

One particular concern, the FBI director said, springs from the country's background as a "nation of immigrants." Federal officials worry about pockets of possible radicals among melting-pot communities in the United States such as Seattle, San Diego, Miami or New York.

A Joint Terrorism Task Force led by the FBI, for instance, continues to investigate a group in Minneapolis after one young man last fall flew to Somalia and became what authorities believe to be the first U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing. As many as a half-dozen other youths from that community in Minnesota have vanished, alarming their parents and raising concerns among law enforcement officials that a dangerous recruiting network has operated under the radar.

"The prospect of young men, indoctrinated and radicalized in their own communities . . . is a perversion of the immigrant story," Mueller said.

For the first time, Mueller also disclosed details about FBI efforts to assist Indian authorities probing a November siege by conspirators with ties to a terrorist group in Pakistan. FBI Special Agent Steve Merrill, a legal attache posted to the bureau's office in New Delhi, had been preparing to play cricket for the American team competing at the Maharajah's annual tournament, the FBI director recalled.

Instead Merrill detoured to Mumbai, where he helped to rescue Americans trapped in the burning Taj Hotel and coordinated the arrival of the bureau's rapid deployment team.

Analysts and agents from the FBI ultimately conducted 60 interviews including one of the lone surviving attacker, Ajmal Amir Kasab. Forensics experts pulled fingerprints from improvised explosive devices and recovered data from damaged cellphones, once "literally wiring a smashed phone back together," Mueller said

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 50_pf.html

Perverse Policy
By John Wahala, February 27, 2009

Lamenting the choice of Somali Americans to become suicide bombers back home, FBI Director Robert Mueller explained, “The prospect of young men, indoctrinated and radicalized within their own communities, and induced to travel to such countries to take up arms—and to kill themselves and perhaps many others—is a perversion of the immigrant story.â€