A 10-month FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation found several Somali-American men conspiring to aid and join the ISIS terrorist group based in Syria.
Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger on Monday detailed how six men secretly planned on boarding flights in California and New York en route to the Middle East.
"These men were intent on joining terrorist," Luger said. "On several occasions they attempted to travel to Syria to join terrorist fighters." Luger added that the Minnesotans recruited each other "friend to friend, brother to brother" while getting help from Abdi Nur, a Twin Cities man joined ISIS last year. They presumed Nur dead and unknowingly connected with an FBI informant.
Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 21, and Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 21, were arrested in San Diego last Friday after attempting to obtain fake passports from an FBI agent. Four others -Hanad Mustafe Musse, 19; Guled Ali Omar, 20; Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, 19; Adnan Farrah, 19 - were stopped in Minneapolis on Sunday and were expected in a St. Paul courtroom this afternoon.
According to the state's complaint, three of the converts were briefly stopped at New York City's John F. Kennedy airport last November. No charges ensured.
Last May, Yusuf was detained at Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport just before he could travel to Istanbul. Omar also unsuccessfully tried leaving around the same time, draining $5,000 from his federal student financial aid account. He re-deposited the funds on May 29 after his travel plans fell through.
One conversation mentioned in the affidavit referenced a warning Farah issued to an unidentified individual. "We gotta be smarter, brother, we can't make dumb decisions like we always do. Rational decisions," Farah is quoted as saying during a discussion about getting phony passports to travel into Mexico.
The Minneapolis area houses the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the U.S. Authorities say at least five state residents have traveled to Syria as "Western fighters" within the last year; since 2007, 22 have joined the militant group al-Shabab.
"It's clear we have a problem," said Luger. "This problem is not a Somalia problem. It's not an immigration problem...it's a Minnesota problem."