Young Men Vanish into Somalia

Anguished Minnesota families say a group of seven youths who vanished on Nov. 4 may have gone to join an Islamist militia. They aren’t the first to leave.

By Bob Drogin
January 18, 2009

Reporting from Minneapolis — Tall and lean, with a wispy mustache and shy smile, 17-year-old Burhan Hassan chalked up A’s last fall as a senior at Roosevelt High School, vowing to become a doctor or lawyer.

After school and on weekends, he studied Islam at the nearby Abubakar As-Saddique mosque. He joined its youth group.

“He wanted to go to Harvard,” said his uncle Osman Ahmed. “That was his dream.”

Instead Hassan has gone to Somalia, the anarchic East African nation that his family fled when he was a toddler.  For the rest of the story http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-missing18-2009jan18,0,5896865.story?track=ntothtml