Twin Cities Have Major Terrorist Problem--Terrorist Networks Target Large Twin Cities Somali Population (Pictures, Video]

Members of the Minneapolis Somali community wait May 12, 2015, to enter the US courthouse in Minneapolis where a federal judge ordered four Minnesota men accused of trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group held pending trial.

The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced that a young man from Minneapolis, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to charges related to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL

But the man, who prosecutors identified as 19-year-old Hanad Musse, was hardly the only Twin Cities resident to face charges in recent months for allegedly supporting the extremist group.

There have been a string of Islamic State-related arrests over roughly the last year.

Why Minneapolis? Authorities say it’s linked to Minneapolis-St. Paul’s large Somali community.

According to The New York Times, estimates peg the local Somali population, which Minneapolis touts as the largest in the US, at roughly 30,000 people.

Reports have described violent extremism as bubbling up within the local Somali community going back years, especially as a result of the 2006 conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia. At the time, much of the terrorism-recruitment issue centered on al-Shabab, the Somali-based group that would later become an Al Qaeda affiliate.

The office of Minnesota’s US attorney, Andrew Luger, said Wednesday that groups “like the Islamic State” have since exclusively targeted the local Somali community.

“Since Al Shabaab began recruiting Minnesota’s youth in 2006, the Twin Cities have been a focus of overseas terror recruiting by organizations like the Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This cycle of terror recruiting has exclusively targeted Minnesota’s Somali community,” Luger’s office said in a press release.

Indeed, Musse was one of six men from the region who were charged last April for their alleged ties to the extremist group. At the time, Luger directly said that Minnesota has a “problem” with terror recruiting, which he described as decentralized and widespread.

“To be clear: We have a terror-recruiting problem in Minnesota. And this case demonstrates how difficult it is to put an end to recruiting here,” he said at news conference the Minnesota US attorney’s office. “Parents and loved ones should know that there is not one master recruiter organizing in the Somali community locally. What this case shows is that the person radicalizing your son, your brother, your friend, may not be a stranger. It may be their best friend right here in town.     source