Minn. Somalis cancel public statement on disappearing youth

The imam from the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in Minneapolis, who is on the no-fly list and is accused of recruiting Somali youth to join al Shabaab, is probably concerned about all the recent negative PR.
From City Pages

Imams, community leaders, and parents of Somali youth who have disappeared in recent months planned a press conference in response to recent media coverage. But disagreements led the organizers to cancel the event.

Several young Somali men have left the Twin Cities and their families and the FBI believe they may have joined Al-Shabab, an Islamist group in Somalia that the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. Some have blamed Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in Minneapolis, a prominent mosque that many of the men attended. The mosque denies any relationship with the disappearances.

Last week, Newsweek wrote about the disappearances and ran a photograph of the mosque's imam. A lot of their story paralleled work done by Abdi Aynte, a local BBC reporter who writes for MNIndy.

Members of the Somali community organized a press conference to take place in Cedar-Riverside today to respond to the media coverage. It was not immediately clear why the press conference was canceled. A representative from Abubakar e-mailed this:

I have been just notified that today's press release has been canceled due to some disagreements among the committee that prepared the program.