Terror recruitment puts parents on alert

From a bench in a Minneapolis courtroom Wednesday, the father of Hanad Musse looked aghast. He watched his teen son, in an orange jumpsuit, stammer through answers, and eventually plead guilty to a charge that could send him to prison for up to 15 years.

Hanad Musse, 19, who was born and raised in Minnesota, told the judge he wanted to join ISIS because he believed the group's claims: He wanted to help build an Islamic state and free the Syrian people during a brutal crackdown by the regime of President Bashar Assad. He told the judge, "I committed a terrorist act, and I'm guilty of it."

Musse's admission Wednesday that he plotted with friends to join the terrorist group ISIS is putting some Somali-American parents on alert. Community leaders are hoping that the guilty plea will help convince some mothers and fathers that terror recruitment is indeed a threat in Minnesota — and that their children may be targeted.

Hours after Musse's court appearance, a Somali community member, Farhio Khalif, said her heart aches for his parents. She says it must be a nightmare for them, but maybe their son's admission will help bring closure to something they did not want to believe.

"Now, finally, their son is saying, 'Yes, I did think about these thoughts and had these ideas and talked to my friends about it. I didn't know how to tell you, Mom, I didn't know how to tell you, Dad, but yes, really this took place,'" she said.

Khalif runs a nonprofit helping East African women. She says she wants parents to talk about warning signs and how to better engage with their kids.

Khalif also sits on a Somali-American task force closely aligned with U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andy Luger. On Wednesday, they officially announced their experiment to make young people in their community more resilient to extremist ideology. It includes mentorships through Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Twin Cities and a new so-called Opportunity Hub, which will provide young Somalis with job training.

Abdisalam Adam, a teacher and religious leader behind the effort, said the problem of terror recruitment is urgent.

"We feel the pain of parents of sons and daughters who sadly made the wrong decision of going to a war region that their parents have no connection to," he said. "Their parents have taken so much effort and hardship just to get them here."

Adam said there's something missing in young people's lives that is causing them to lose their way, but together, he said, religious and community leaders, law enforcement and nonprofits could solve the problem. He told his fellow Somalis that their historic mistrust of government shouldn't get in the way of working to help keep kids safe.

But at the same time, a dueling press conference was getting underway criticizing that approach.

Jaylani Hussein of the local Council on American-Islamic Relations says the pilot program promises to help Somali youth only through the lens of counterterrorism.

"We believe this program stigmatizes our community," Hussein said. "It's a Department of Justice program and therefore a program that looks at the Muslim community — identifying them to be the only community where extremism or violence occurs — and that is absolutely not true."

Back at the first press conference, Luger said he's still trying to work with families to prevent more kids from leaving for Syria. He says his office and the FBI have reached out to families to prevent their children from traveling overseas to join extremist groups. But he says in some cases, those discussions were not fruitful.

"There are people who are in Syria today, there are people who have died in Syria in recent times, where we tried to work with family members, and community members tried to work with the family, and we were all unsuccessful," Luger said. "I think everybody here today is committed to turning the problem around."

Hanad Musse, the teen who pleaded guilty, said in court that his father did stop him from another foiled attempt to join ISIS.

Last spring, he said, his dad confronted him about his plans and convinced him not to leave the country. But he still wanted to travel overseas to join ISIS. He told the judge that as much as he wanted to honor his father's every word, he was just confused.

Musse is the second Minnesota man to plead guilty in the ISIS investigation. Abdullahi Yusuf, 19, pleaded to a similar charge in February and is now cooperating with the government.

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