Via NYTimes.com -
Two New Jersey men in their 20s who were bound for Somalia to join an Islamic extremist group and to kill American troops were arrested at Kennedy International Airport late Saturday, federal and local authorities announced on Sunday.
he men, Mohamed Haoud Alessa, 20, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24, were to join Al Shabaab, which claims ideological kinship with Al Qaeda, and was thought to have provided a haven to Qaeda operatives wanted for bombings of United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The men were taken into custody as they prepared to take separate flights to Egypt, the first leg of their journey to Somalia to join Al Shabaab, the officials said in a news release.
[...]
Al Shabaab was designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2008. Federal authorities have said that as two dozen young men of Somali descent who had disappeared in the past two years from their homes in the Minneapolis area had been being recruited by Al Shabaab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, and one of them carried out a suicide bombing there in 2008.
[...]
Both were charged in a criminal complaint with a single count of conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
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