US Senate report highlights growing terror threat from radicalised Americans
By ANIWednesday, January 20, 2010
LONDON - The US Senate has expressed deep concern over radicalised Americans in Yemen and Somalia posing a major threat to the US.
CBS News quoted a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report as saying “as many as three dozen former criminals who converted to Islam in prison moved to Yemen, ostensibly to study Arabic. Some have disappeared and are suspected of having gone to al Qaeda training camps.”
It added, “nearly 10 non-Yemeni Americans converted to Islam, became fundamentalists and married Yemeni women so they could remain in the country.”
According to one official, these are the “blond-haired, blue-eyed types” al Qaeda seeks to recruit.
However, there is “no evidence that any of these Americans have undergone training.”
But, officials say, “they are on heightened alert because of the potential threat from extremists carrying American passports.”
Fears have also expressed in the report that American citizens are being recruited in Somalia for terrorist operations.
It has been widely reported that a number of Americans have travelled there to train and fight with the terror group al Shabaab. (ANI)
