America
IS recruiting US teenagers, says FBI
Washington, Feb 4
The US Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) has seen children as young as 15 being recruited by
the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, a media report said Wednesday.
FBI's
counter-terrorist division head Michael Steinbach is leading the effort
to stay on top of the evolving threat landscape, which includes
targeting and recruiting teenage Americans, CNN reported.
Steinbach
said he "can't speak with 100 percent certainty that individuals of
that age group have not gotten over there successfully".
It was
extremely difficult to track every American who might travel abroad to
join terrorist groups like the IS, Steinbach said.
He said that US law enforcement and intelligence agencies did not track individuals leaving the US for vacations in Europe.
"Once you get to Europe, you can easily get down to Turkey and into Syria," Steinbach added.
There is growing concern about homegrown violent extremism in the aftermath of last month's terror attacks in Paris.
Those
strikes underscored the threat posed to the West by small groups of
terrorists with Western passports who are influenced by the rhetoric
espoused by the IS.
Steinbach is concerned that such type of attack could happen on US soil.
Steinbach
said the FBI was working round the clock to combat the recruitment of
Americans but US law enforcement could not do the job alone. It was up
to families to speak up as well, he said.