Tuesday February 6, 2018
By Stephen Montemayor
Connections to earlier wave who joined Al-Shabab added to surge, but attempts to leave are on decline.
The cover of the report from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism that was released on Monday. Screenshot of George Washington University report
An unprecedented "cluster"
of Minnesotans aspiring to become jihadists overseas fueled the
nation's highest rate of terrorism recruitment, according to a new study
that also found that attempts to travel to Syria or Iraq are on a
steady decline since 2015.
The number
of Americans to successfully join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) is just a fraction of the several thousand Europeans who have
made it into the group's ranks. But researchers at George Washington
University's Program on Extremism found that Minnesota, particularly the
Twin Cities, has seen an unusually active rate of jihadist mobilization
with roots in an earlier wave of departures to join Somalia's Al-Shabab
militants in the late 2000s.
In a report released Monday
called "The Travelers: American Jihadists in Syria and Iraq," three
terrorism scholars described a Twin Cities cluster more akin to terror
conspiracy hubs in Belgian and French neighborhoods than the more common
one- and two-off efforts more typically foiled by American law
enforcement.
"The
relatively high number of travelers is a reflection of the personal
connections," Seamus Hughes, one of the report's authors, said Monday.
"Brothers, roommates, and friends of individuals who traveled to join
Al-Shabab in Somalia were part of the group that traveled to Syria.
Personal connections still matter a great deal to successfully make it
to conflict areas."
The report
— authored by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Hughes and Bennett Clifford
— looked at seven Minnesota cases of successful travelers who were part
of a group of 64 Americans who traveled to join jihadist groups in
Syria and Iraq since 2011. They found at least another 50 Americans who
were stopped from trying to travel overseas and added that both data
sets "pale in comparison to recruitment" from some European cities.
But while
the most popular form of "jihadist mobilization" has recently been
traveling to join groups like ISIS abroad, the recent loss of territory
and calls for a renewed focus on attacks in the West have contributed to
a steady drop in traveler cases since 2015, the report found.
"The
concern is that, absent a physical space to travel to, their focus will
shift elsewhere to avenging the loss of the Islamic State," Hughes said.
"We've seen Islamic State propaganda romanticizing the lost caliphate
and calling for those to commit attacks out of revenge."
Though all
but one of the publicly identified Minnesota travelers were male, the
state's travelers were much younger than the report's average age of 27.
The report cautioned that researchers have been unable to identify a
single profile of would-be jihadists.
Minnesota's
successful travelers — like Hanad Mohallim and Abdi Nur — kept in touch
with friends back home as they attempted to follow them to Syria in
2014 and 2015. The report cited a senior law enforcement official
involved in the investigation as saying that had Abdullahi Yusuf not
raised suspicions during his passport application interview, Yusuf might
never have been stopped from boarding a May 2014 flight to Istanbul the
day before Nur left on a similar flight undetected.
The tip triggered the nation's largest terror recruitment probe, netting nine convictions and additional charges in absentia against those who made it overseas.
The
researchers called the Minnesota case "the one known exception to the
norm of American traveler networks" in that the group transcended
several friend and family circles and included at least 15 people
directly. Co-conspirators had connections to Al-Shabab members, like
Mohamed Hassan, a Roosevelt High grad who has been under indictment
since 2009 for allegedly joining the group in Somalia.
The U.S.
attorney's office in Minnesota has not charged anyone with trying to
support terrorists since the 2016 case. Last year, the Star Tribune
reported on a previously unidentified St. Louis Park college student who
is believed to have left his family to join ISIS on a trip to their
native Morocco in 2015. By all accounts thus far, Abdelhamid Al-Madioum had no clear connection to the larger traveler network, which was predominantly young Somali men.
Federal
agents in Minnesota have more recently been looking for links to
terrorism in violent cases like the 2016 stabbing at St. Cloud's
Crossroads Center mall for which ISIS claimed credit, and in a pair of
Twin Cities cases still being assessed by law enforcement.
Mahad A. Abdirahman, 20, surprised federal authorities last month when he told a Hennepin County judge
that he sought to answer the call of ISIS leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi
when he stabbed two men at the Mall of America last fall. Original
charging documents didn't list a motive and suggested Abdirahman had
psychological problems. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 16 and a
plea deal calls for him to serve 15½ years — five years more than either
of the six Minnesotans sentenced last year after pleading guilty to
conspiring to support ISIS.
It is also
unclear whether federal charges will be pursued against former St.
Catherine University student Tnuza J. Hassan, who told police that she
wanted to burn the school "to the ground" when she set a series of small
fires on campus last month.
According
to a criminal complaint charging her with first-degree arson, Hassan
told investigators she would have used a bomb if she knew how to build
one and that she had written a letter containing "radical ideas about
supporting Muslims and bringing back the caliphate."