ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Six Minnesota men have been charged with terrorism in a criminal complaint unsealed Monday, the latest Westerners accused of traveling or attempting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.
The six, whom authorities described as friends who met secretly to plan their travels, are accused of conspiracy to provide material support and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The complaint says the men planned to reach Syria by flying to nearby countries from Minneapolis, San Diego or New York City and that they lied to federal investigators when they were stopped.
Those charged are brothers Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 21, and Adnan Abdihamid Farah, 19; Abdurahman Yasin Daud, 21; Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, 19; Hanad Mustafe Musse, 19; and Guled Ali Omar, 20. All are Somali-Americans, authorities said.
"These were focused men who were intent on joining a terrorist organization," Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said at a news conference Monday.
All six were arrested Sunday. Adnan Farah, Abdurahman, Musse and Omar were arrested in Minneapolis. They entered no plea, as is standard, during an initial court appearance Monday and were ordered held pending detention hearings Thursday.
Mohamed Farah and Daud were arrested in San Diego and appeared in court there. They were also ordered held pending hearings Friday and are likely to be returned to Minnesota to face charges.
They are the latest people from Minnesota to be charged in an investigation stretching back months into the recruitment of Westerners by the Islamic State. Authorities have said a handful of Minnesota residents have traveled to Syria to fight with militants in the past year and that at least one has died.
Luger said the recruitment was "a peer-to-peer operation" in which friends compared notes on how to raise money for airline tickets, evade FBI scrutiny and connect with Islamic State travel facilitators in Turkey.
Three of those charged in the newest complaint -- Mohamed Farah, Abdurahman and Musse -- were stopped at a New York City airport in November along with 19-year-old Hamza Ahmed, but they were not charged until now.
Ahmed was indicted on charges of lying to the FBI during a terrorism investigation, conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State, and attempting to provide material support. He has pleaded innocent.
Despite being stopped in New York City, Luger said, the three continued to try to get to Syria to join the Islamic State "by any means possible."
The complaint describes several interactions some of the men had with Abdi Nur, a Minnesota man charged previously with conspiracy to provide support to a terror organization. The complaint says Nur, "from his locale in Syria, recruits individuals and provides assistance to those who want to leave Minnesota to fight abroad."
The complaint relies in part on material from a confidential informant who had conspired to join the Islamic State before he changed his mind and went to authorities. Some of the informant's conversations with the six men were recorded.
Daud, Mohamed Farah and the informant drove together in Daud's car to San Diego, according to court documents. The informant had said he knew someone who could provide them with forged passports.
The top FBI agent in Minneapolis, Richard Thornton, praised the informant and others in the Somali community who assisted the agency in trying to stop the recruiting, calling them "courageous" for acting against a terrorist group he said is "evil at its core."
Abdihamid Farah Yusuf, the father of Adnan and Mohamed Farah, said he doesn't believe his sons did what authorities allege.
Mohamud Noor, executive director of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, said he was saddened by the arrests. Noor said one of the men went to him and asked for help but that he didn't have the resources to intervene.
The number of Islamic State recruits from the United States remains small in comparison with western Europe, where more than 3,000 people are believed to have traveled to Syria to join the group. But law enforcement and intelligence officials have tracked and tried to disrupt the travel in part because they were concerned that Americans could train with the Islamic State and then return to the U.S. to carry out attacks.
Americans trying to join the Islamic State have been a diverse group, including many women, with ages ranging from the early teens to late 40s, and comprising both converts to Islam and children from Muslim immigrant families. The largest single group, however, has consisted of Somali-Americans from Minnesota.
The FBI has been investigating how the Islamic State recruiting has worked and whether the sophisticated social-media campaign of the terrorist group is supplemented by face-to-face recruiting on the ground in the United States.
The Minneapolis area is home to the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the U.S. Since 2007, more than 22 Somali men have traveled from Minnesota to Somalia to join the militant group al-Shabab.
Omar's older brother, Ahmed Ali Omar, was among those who joined al-Shabab, leaving Minnesota in December 2007, according to the complaint. Ahmed Omar remains a fugitive. The complaint also said that when agents went to the younger Omar's house after he was stopped in San Diego in November, another brother, Mohamed Ali Omar, threatened them.
Information for this article was contributed by Amy Forliti of The Associated Press and Scott Shane of The New York Times.
A Section on 04/21/2015