Faisal Shahzad Met Taliban

From New York to Al-Qaeda

U.S. Sees Homegrown Muslim Extremism as Rising Threat
LOS ANGELES TIMES: This may have been the most dangerous year since 9/11, anti-terrorism experts say.

Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism.

Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters' trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.

Europe had been the front line, the target of successive attacks and major plots, while the U.S. remained relatively calm. But the number, variety and scale of recent U.S. cases suggest 2009 has been the most dangerous year domestically since 2001, anti-terrorism experts said:

* There were major arrests of Americans accused of plotting with Al Qaeda and its allies, including an Afghan American charged in a New York bomb plot described as the most serious threat in this country since the Sept. 11 attacks.

* Authorities tracked other extremism suspects joining foreign networks, including Somali Americans going to the battlegrounds of their ancestral homeland and an Albanian American from Brooklyn who was arrested in Kosovo.

* The FBI rounded up homegrown terrorism suspects in Dallas, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C., saying that it had broken up plots targeting a synagogue, government buildings and military facilities.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued her strongest public comments yet on the homegrown threat.

"We've seen an increased number of arrests here in the U.S. of individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, or supporting terror groups abroad such as Al Qaeda," Napolitano said in a speech in New York. "Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront."

Officials acknowledged that her tone had changed, though they said terrorism has been her focus since becoming Homeland Security chief.

In some of the 2009 cases, extremist leanings are suspected but motives are not known.

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- accused of killing 13 people in a Ft. Hood, Texas, shooting rampage last month -- has apparently suffered emotional problems. But in interviews, officials and experts have also raised his Muslim beliefs as an alleged motive.

A previous attack on the U.S. military, a shooting in June by an American convert who killed a soldier and wounded another at an Arkansas recruiting center, was apparently a case of a lone wolf radicalized in Yemen, according to Homeland Security officials.

"You are seeing the full spectrum of the threats you face in terrorism," former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

"Radicalization is clearly happening in the U.S.," said Mitchell Silber, director of analysis for the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department. "In years past, you couldn't say that about the U.S. You could say it about Europe." >>> Sebastian Rotella | Monday, December 07, 2009

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THE TELEGRAPH: The United States is facing what has been described as its "most serious instance of domestic terrorism" to date, the FBI has warned.

Officials say a second generation of Somali immigrants is becoming increasingly radicalised and could pose a growing threat to security.

The warnings come amid the revelation that 20 young Somali American men who returned to their war-torn homeland have been radicalised by a group linked to al-Qaeda.

The FBI is urgently examining links between the youths, who are all American citizens, and al-Shabaab, an Islamist group fighting in the country's long-running conflict.

Investigators are concentrating on two mosques, the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Centre in Minneapolis and the Dawah Institute in the neighbouring city of St Paul, where parents and guardians of the departed youths said their sons attended classes.

But the probe has now spread to Boston, San Diego, Seattle, Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Maine.

US law enforcement agencies are concerned young militants could return to the US to plot terror attacks, following a similar path to the British Pakistanis behind the London bombings in July 7, 2005 who made multiple visits to radical mosques in Pakistan.

The authorities began looking into the radicalisation of Somali youths after 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed became the first known American suicide bomber in late October.

The Minneapolis student blew himself up in one of five co-ordinated bombings in northern Somalia orchestrated by al-Shabaab, whose former leader reportedly trained at terror camps in Afghanistan before being killed in an American air strike in May, 2008. US Facing Home-grown Islamic Terror Threat >>> By Alex Spillius in Washington | Friday, March 13, 2009

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