Richard Sennott, Star Tribune
Mustafa Ali was 17 when he and his brother Yusuf posed for this picture. Within months, Mustafa had flown to Somalia without explanation.
Six months have passed since Mustafa Ali vanished from St. Paul. His family is left to wonder how he got to Somalia and why.
By RICHARD MERYHEW, Star Tribune
Sunday, February 08, 2009
His shirts and jeans still hang from a nearby closet, and books are stacked or scattered about the floor as he left them.
"Nothing has changed," his father says, his voice cracking as he looks around the room where his son once slept. "Nothing has changed since Mustafa left."
Six months have passed since 18-year-old Mustafa Ali slipped out of his family's third-floor apartment on St. Paul's East Side and never came back. Not a day passes without the teenager's loved ones being haunted by the mystery of why he left or what has become of him.
Was he, along with his best friend and more than a half-dozen other Somali teenagers and young men from the Twin Cities, recruited by local imams or Islamic extremists to return to war-torn Somalia to fight in the nation's civil war? Or was Mustafa simply an impressionable teenager acting on a long-expressed desire to return to his homeland?
As family members pray for his safety and return, they've spent the past six months trying to accept what appears to be the disturbing reality -- that the quiet, affable high school senior who loved football, history and video games secretly conspired with other Twin Cities Somalis to return and become soldiers for one or more of the warring groups there.
'We don't want to believe Mustafa can keep a secret from us for so long," said his father, Ali, 58, an unemployed engineer who brought his family to the United States nine years ago from a refugee camp in Kenya. "There are many 'Whys? Whys? Whys? Why this or that?' And we don't have an answer."
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No money
You have a group of people that have a cast system in place here in the US. The poor remain poor and the wealthy profit. The American dream is not here for them so what other choice do they have?
A Caste System?
We have opportunity for those who wish to become Americans; not the hyphenated Americans but one who truly leaves their former country and embraces the new home. We do not have a caste system. Every generation with hard work can succeed.
@beautyeh
have you ever been to Somalia? Where is your "yes we can" attitude? unbelievable
Newflash!! He's a terrorist!!!
Along with the rest of these little bastards that went back to Somalia. Wonder when the FBI will really step in and find out what Mosques need to be closed and who to arrest for "recruiting" them?
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