House Panel: al-Shabaab Poses “Direct Threat” to U.S.

IPT News
July 27, 2011

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3066/house-panel-al-shabaab-poses-direct-threat-to-us

More than 40 Somalis living in America and 20 in Canada have traveled to Somalia to join the jihad waged there by the terrorist group al-Shabaab, a House Homeland Security Committee staff report finds. At least 15 of the Americans have died in al-Shabaab violence, but the whereabouts of 21 others remain unknown.
Although that violence has been limited so far to Africa, two witnesses who appeared before the committee Wednesday said the United States should consider them, and al-Shabaab, as “a direct threat to the U.S. homeland.”
Al-Shabaab’s recruiting success in the West is unrivaled, said committee chairman Peter King, R-N.Y. “Not al-Qaeda, nor any of its other affiliates, have come close to drawing so many Muslim-Americans and Westerners to jihad,” King said in opening remarks.
The bulk of those American recruits came from the Minneapolis area. But one of the most dangerous is Omar Hammami of Daphne, Ala., a Southern Baptist convert to Islam who has promised to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden in May. “Hammami poses a direct threat to the U.S. homeland with his ability to assist Shabaab, core Al Qaeda or AQAP with plots, but he also has become a source of inspiration for jihadis,” the report said. “Two terror defendants in New York, Betim Kaziu and Saujah Hadzovic, were inspired to travel to Egypt for violent Islamic jihad by watching Hammami tapes.”
It was the third hearing held by the committee on radicalization within the American Muslim community.