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Probe into US women joining Islamists
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US law enforcement is investigating the phenomenon of women from America’s heartland joining Islamic State as President Barack Obama vows to cut off the militants’ recruiting at home.
At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis-St Paul area have female relatives who have gone missing in the past six weeks and may have tried to join Islamic State, said community leader Abdirizak Bihi. He said that while the reasons for their disappearance were unclear, he had told the families to contact police.
In a separate case, a 19-year-old American Somali woman from St Paul snuck away from her parents on August 25 saying she was going to a bridal shower. Instead, she flew to Turkey and joined IS in Syria.
Home to the biggest Somali community in the United States, the Twin Cities area of Minnesota has been plagued by terrorist recruiting since Somali group al-Shabaab began enlisting in America around 2007.
This year, law enforcement officials say they learned of 15 to 20 men with connections to the Minnesota Somali community fighting for extremist groups in Syria. They included Douglas McAuthur McCain, a convert to Islam, who was killed in battle this summer.
Family fears retaliation
The St Paul woman is the first case of a female in the area joining IS that has been made public although her family have asked for her name to be kept private because it fears retaliation from Islamists.
Greg Boosalis, FBI division counsel in Minneapolis, said law enforcement was investigating the possible recruitment in the area by Islamist extremists of other women, as well as men, but refused to comment on specific cases.
Somali leaders and sources close to police worry that the reports of female would-be jihadis from the region could mark a new trend.
The St Paul woman is highly likely to have been recruited by IS through Islamist sympathizers in the US, rather than joining the group on her own, they said. At least one other woman is suspected of helping her leave the US.
Another US teenager, nurse’s aide Shannon Conley, 19, from Colorado, pleaded guilty this week to trying to travel to the Middle East to enroll in IS. She was arrested at Denver International Airport in April with a one-way ticket and had been recruited online by a male militant in Syria.
Nipping domestic extremism in the bud before Americans try to join terrorist groups is part of Obama’s strategy against IS announced in a televised address last week.
Along with an aerial bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, Obama said the government would “intervene with at-risk individuals before they become radicalized toward violence and decide to travel abroad to Syria and Iraq.”
He said authorities would offer “tailored domestic programs to prevent violent extremism and radicalization” but gave no more details.
The Somali woman from St Paul who traveled to Syria attended a mosque near the eastern bank of the Mississippi River which had previously attracted suspected extremists. In June, the mosque banned an Egyptian-American man it said was spreading radical ideology.
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