Minnesota man whose tweets urged jihad surrenders in Africa

He is a “lawful permanent resident” of the United States, but is not a citizen, the State Department said.

Officials in the U.S. Mission to Somalia are in talks with the Somali government, but the U.S. doesn’t have an extradition agreement with Somalia.

Hassan is one of the FBI’s nine most wanted terror fugitives from Minnesota and is charged with providing support to terrorist organizations.

In recent months a dispute has broken out within al-Shabaab over whether to maintain ties to Al Qaeda or switch allegiance to Islamic State (IS).

Al-Shabab is fighting to overthrow Somalia’s government and establish a state based on its interpretation of Islamic law.

Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan spoke with Voice of America by phone Tuesday from prison.

An official with Somali security forces who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press said Jones claimed he fled al-Shabab because of rifts within the rebel group.

Mohamad Abdullahi Hassan, who went by “Mujahid Miski”, called on Twitter for an attack on the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in May in Garland, Texas, and is believed to have contacted the San Bernardino, Calif., couple who killed 14 people last week, KTSP-TV reported.

Hassan, who went by the nickname Miski when he was in Minneapolis, was just 17 and a high school senior when he left the U.S.to join al-Shabab in August 2008. “If I am to be going to court, it is going to be in Somalia not in America”.

The United States, other Western powers and countries in the region see the fight against the al Qaeda-aligned group as a vital part of the battle to prevent Islamist militancy spreading in East Africa and beyond. He escaped but was later arrested by the government. The “ambitions” by some foreign fighters in al-Shabab to join the Islamic State group had led to them to be isolated within the Somali group and even face death at the hands of their erstwhile comrades-in-arms.

“No one expected him according to officials, and he has now been airlifted and is being kept [by the government] in Mogadishu”, Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow said.

“One of his important activities was he was reaching out to people that he knew, people that were somehow connected to him, and recruiting them”, she said.

Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, said Hassan had at least 33 Twitter accounts and used social media to help recruit a new class of jihadists, including some from Minnesota.