Posted on September 11, 2014

At Least Three Young Minnesota Women Have Traveled to Syria to Aid ISIS Jihadis

Martin Gould, Daily Mail (London), September 11, 2014

At least three young Minnesota women are now believed to have traveled to Syria to give aid to the ISIS terror group responsible for the brutal beheadings of American journalists, MailOnline has learned.

The trio left some three weeks ago, Omar Jamal, a leader of the Somali community in the state capital, St. Paul, tells MailOnline. They said they intended to become nurses tending to fighters injured in ISIS’ violent surge in Syria and Iraq.

The news comes as 19-year-old suburban Denver woman Shannon Conley who federal authorities say intended to wage jihad has pleaded guilty to trying to help the Islamic State militant group in Syria.

Abroad, police fear two young girls who fled Austria are inspiring other teenagers to join Islamic State ranks after they successfully fled the country saying they were going to Syria.

Samra Kesinovic was aged just 16 and her friend Sabina Selimovic 15 when the two vanished this year from their homes in the Austrian capital Vienna.

The case of one of the Minnesota girls, a 19-year-old, has already been widely reported, after the girl’s family called the FBI, but Jamal said he believes at least two more girls have gone to the Middle East hotspot.

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The shocking new revelation comes as MailOnline can reveal that the FBI has subpoenaed the 19-year-old girl’s family to appear before a Grand Jury later this month, as authorities attempt to discover who bought her ticket, gave her money and provided her with a false passport.

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‘They are looking for evidence on exactly what the family knows,’ said the source. Included in the subpoena is a demand for cell phone records as the girl called her brother from Turkey and later, after she crossed the border, from Syria.

However, Jamal said the girl’s family is worried about what may happen at the Grand Jury hearing and feels ‘betrayed’ by the FBI’s action as it believed it had done the right thing by contacting authorities in the first place while the families of the two unidentified girls do not have to appear.

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The teen, who turns 20 next month, was about to start nursing classes at St. Paul College but decided to leave to give aid to wounded fighters. Jamal said he is sure she will not be placed into front line battle but it is possible she would be married off to one of the ISIS fighters.

She is the middle of five children brought up by a single Somali mother, living off St. Paul’s Selby Avenue.

She had recently started taking classes at al-Farook Youth and Family Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, said Bob Fletcher, a former sheriff in St. Paul, who has dedicated himself to helping the Twin Cities’ large Somali community since being defeated in an election in 2010.

Al-Farook has been at the center of claims that Amir Meshal, an alleged recruiter for ISIS, had been talking to youngsters on its site. The mosque kicked the New Jersey-born man off campus, but now the Minneapolis-St. Paul Fox TV station has raised questions of whether Meshal is actually an FBI mole rather than an ISIS recruiter.

‘What we don’t know is whether al-Farook is part of the problem or part of the solution right now,’ said Jamal. ‘And who is Amir Meschal? Where did he come from? Did he recruit these girls?’

Meshal sued the FBI in federal court in 2009 claiming he was tortured and held for four months in three different countries after being apprehended crossing the Somali border into Kenya.

The young woman who is known to have gone to Syria traveled on a ‘borrowed’ passport. However the passport holder did not report it was missing until the girl had already entered Syria, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.

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