Federal agents are meeting regularly with Yemeni-American leaders in metro Detroit because of the U.S. government’s growing anxiety about the threat of terrorism emanating from Yemen, the Free Press has learned.

The FBI in Detroit launched an outreach program to the local Yemeni community earlier this year. In recent months, agents have stepped up their interviewing and questioning of local Yemeni Americans.
“We have a large number of American citizens who are in Yemen,” said Andrew Arena, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI office. “Why are they there?”
Arena said he’s specifically concerned about the possibility of some Yemenis in metro Detroit traveling back to Yemen to become radicals in the same way that some Somali Americans from Minnesota have been going back to Somalia to fight with groups with al-Qaida ties. This month, federal prosecutors charged 14 people, many of them U.S. citizens from Minnesota of Somali descent, with working for the terrorist group al-Shabab in Somalia.
“We cannot have another Minneapolis Somalia situation,” Arena said earlier this year in a meeting with the Jewish community in West Bloomfield. Arena did not comment on the latest case Tuesday, but he spoke extensively about Yemeni Americans at the meeting.
“My real concern with the Yemeni community here is similar to what we saw in Minneapolis with the Somali community, who … wandered back to fight,” Arena said. “Is this a problem we’re seeing?”
“I tell them, the parents, ‘Do you want your kids to go back to be killed?’ ” while fighting for terrorist groups, Arena said.
Yemen’s consul general in Detroit, Abdul-Hakim Al-Sadah, said the FBI has met with Yemenis in its office and his to discuss the concerns. Al-Sadah and other local leaders say they support the dialogue and are committed to weeding out any extremists, though cautioned against stereotyping.
Arena noted accusations that a Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, was involved with the Dec. 25, 2009, bombing attempt aboard a Detroit-bound plane. Nigerian native Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is charged in the case. After that attack, Yemeni Americans — concentrated in Detroit, south Dearborn and Hamtramck — got “frequent visits and questioning by the FBI,” said Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Many Yemenis in metro Detroit travel frequently between Michigan and Yemen to visit family; some deliver gifts and money to relatives, while others go to school or get married there.
Arena said “there are a number of language schools in Yemen” that are cheaper compared with those in other Arab countries, making them an attractive option for students looking to learn Arabic and Islam.
“The question is: Are some of these schools being used like the madrasahs were in Pakistan to … send them into … Afghan training camps. You got the same thing going on. You look at Abdulmutallab. … His first stop in Yemen was a terrorist training camp there to find al-Awlaki. That’s my real concern with the Yemeni population, and to their credit, they see the same thing.”

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