Thread: FBI Director Warns of Mumbai-Style Attacks in U.S.

Notice that the FBI Director announced this to the CFR but not to the American people.

FBI Director Warns of Mumbai-Style Attacks in U.S.
Monday, February 23, 2009 10:12 PM

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III issued a new warning Monday that terrorists are prepared to conduct Mumbai-style attacks on U.S. soil.

In a speech before the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., Mueller said that small terror networks "with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons to maximize their impact."

The FBI director then added ominously: "And it again raises the question of whether a similar attack could happen in Seattle or San Diego, Miami, or Manhattan."

Mueller said that terror groups could use homegrown radicals, rather than foreign terrorists, to infiltrate the country. He noted that there are "pockets of people around the world that identify with al-Qaida and its ideology" but act independently of its leadership.

He revealed that a 27-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, Shirwa Ahmed, engaged in a suicide bombing in Somalia last year.

"A man from Minneapolis became what we believe to be the first U.S. citizen to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing," Mueller said.

"The attack occurred last October in northern Somalia, but it appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota," Mueller added. Authorities have said as many as 20 young Somali men reported missing in Minnesota may have returned to Somalia to take up arms.

Mueller warned that events in far-off places around the globe could have repercussions at home.

"World politics often shape terrorist and criminal threats against the United States," he said. "A crisis in the Horn of Africa may well have a ripple effect in Minneapolis."

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/muel ... 84806.html

FBI Director Warns of Terror Attacks on U.S. Cities
By Carrie Johnson
The Washington Post, February 23, 2009

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.
. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01850.html

From the website of the Center for Immigration Studies
http://www.cis.org/griffith/morningnews22409

There is a little more to the story of the suicide bomber.

http://wcco.com/local/minnesota.suicide ... 42364.html

FBI Director Says Minn. Man Likely Suicide Bomber
WASHINGTON (WCCO) ―



Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis is believed to have killed himself in a suicide bombing in Somalia in October 2008. However, investigators fear he may have left a deadly legacy of recruiting other young Somalis to leave Minnesota and join terrorist groups.


In a speech on Monday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the young man was recruited in Minnesota.

"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," Mueller said in the speech.

Leaders in Minnesota are worried other young Somalis are being talked into similar attacks. In the past few months, at least a dozen have disappeared.

The FBI said it's reaching out to parents in hopes of keeping children safe. Minnesota has the largest Somali community in the United States.

From November 2008
http://wcco.com/local/recruiting.somali ... 74911.html

MN Man Possibly Behind Recruiting Somali Terrorists

An investigation into terrorism recruiting among young Somalis leads to Minnesota. Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis is believed to have killed himself in a suicide bombing in Somalia last month. However, investigators fear he may have left a deadly legacy of recruiting other young Somalis to leave Minnesota and join terrorist groups in Somalia.

His high school pictures show a clean cut young man and neighbors at his Minneapolis apartment say lately 26-year-old Shirwa Ahmed had a thick beard.

"He doesn't talk to people," one neighbor said.

The neighbor added he is stunned that Shirwa Ahmed was apparently killed after returning to Somalia and blowing himself up in a suicide attack. No one answered the door at Ahmed's family's apartment. Neighbors say the FBI has been interviewing family and friends.

In recent months a dozen young Somalis, some as young as 17, have left the Twin Cities, apparently headed back to Somalia where a civil war rages.

Omar Jamal, a local Somali activist, said the families of the young men are frightened.

"The families didn't think, it never crossed their mind, that their kids would have gone to Somalia either to blow themselves up or to join the holy war," said Jamal.

Sources tell WCCO the group suspected of recruiting the young Twin Cities men is know as al-Itihadd al-Islamiya, or AIAI, an organization with known ties to Al-Qaeda.

Mark Canjemi is an immigration attorney who is the former agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Administration in Minnesota.

"AIAI has been known in this community through intelligence interviews conducted by the government," said Canjemi.

Canjemi said the Twin Cities Somali community has been a ripe recruiting ground for AIAI for years.

"I believe this recruiting continues on a daily basis," he said.

According to national reports Al Qaeda is enjoying resurgence in Somalia. The FBI said the U.S. government continues to be involved in an active outreach to young Somalis to keep them from being courted by radical groups.