Apartments In Minneapolis

A one-man mission to stop homegrown Somali terrorism in US

Nowhere in the U.S. is the problem of Islamist extremism so concentrated as in downtown Minneapolis, where about 10,000 Somali immigrants live. In the past three years, at least 25 young men have disappeared to fight for al-Shabab, a radicalized group with ties to al-Qaida and aspirations of attacking the United States.

By Eli Saslow

The Washington Post

MINNEAPOLIS —

His afternoon meeting was an urgent matter of national security, but Abdirizak Bihi needed to borrow $10 for the gas needed to get there. The tank in his old truck had sat empty for days, forcing him to ride around in a dress shirt and tie on a borrowed girls bicycle with purple handlebars.

Now he wanted to travel 10 miles down the freeway, and he wanted to move fast. He walked out of his high-rise apartment building and stopped a friend on the sidewalk to plead for a loan. "I promise it's for a good cause," he said, and the friend handed over a few bills. Then Bihi drove off to investigate his community's latest homegrown terrorist.

During the previous few days, Bihi, 46, had pieced together some clues that were equal parts surreal and familiar: Farah Mohamed Beledi, 27, had been a Minnesota kid with American problems who ditched classes in high school, joined a gang and answered to the nickname "Bloody." He had gone to prison for stabbing someone at a soccer game and had come out two years later as a radicalized Muslim, spreading stories about the "United Snakes of America" and meeting other men at a Minneapolis mall to talk about jihad.

He disappeared to Somalia and joined al-Shabab, an Islamist extremist group with ties to al-Qaida and aspirations of attacking the United States.

A terrorist website released an audio recording early this year with hints of Beledi's Midwestern accent: "I would like to talk to my brothers and sisters out there in the West, or wherever you are: Brothers, come. Come to jihad. Die like lions."

Then, in late May, a suicide bomber killed himself and three others in Mogadishu. Photos of the crime scene showed Beledi slumped facedown in the dirt, his military fatigues blown to pieces, his jacket still outfitted with the bomb's trigger.

One week had passed since the deadly attack, and now Bihi was driving to meet with Beledi's stepmother at her apartment in nearby St. Paul. Bihi is the founder, director and sole employee of a community-based counterterrorism program, and he has spent much of the past three years going to meetings just like this.

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