"Mama Shabab" - Former Torontonian a Den Mother to Young Somali Extremists.

"Mama Shabab" - Former Torontonian a Den Mother to Young Somali Extremists.(TS). By Michelle Shephard.NAIROBI—A Canadian woman at the centre of Somalia’s Al Qaeda is known among the intelligence agencies that track her and the foreign militants who praise her simply as “Mama Shabab.”
It is an honorific title for former Toronto resident Fadumo Jama, who intelligence agencies allege is the den mother of al Shabab who runs a safe house for Western fighters recruited into the militant Islamic organization.
While she moves frequently, using forged passports from African countries, it is believed she has operated a home in the Somali town of Merca for at least four years and has supported American and European recruits in the weeks before their suicide bombing missions.
Jama is a well-known figure to intelligence agencies in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Somalia, yet her name does not appear in any public documents and she has not been charged.
But a Toronto Star investigation based on interviews with security, intelligence and law enforcement officials, in addition to leaders in the Somali diaspora here and abroad, reveal a portrait of a female leader vital to the organization.
Her role facilitating Western recruits exemplifies the increasing importance of women to the Shabab — although her position of authority is rare, as most females are recruited only as wives for the fighters or suicide bombers.
Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden told a Senate committee earlier this year that this was an emerging trend.
“(There is) increasing potential for more women in Canada to become radicalized as injunctions against female participation in violent jihad have begun to disappear from extremist websites,” he said. But with their valuable passports and their seeming willingness to die fighting, the Western recruits have intelligence agencies worried — and they keep Mama Shabab on the radar.
“She is very important, as everybody went to her safe house,” one security official, who has collected reports on Jama for years, told the Star on the condition he not be identified. “At least nine of the Americans, including Jehad Mostafa, went through there.”
Mostafa is the 6’1” California university student originally from Wisconsin, indicted in the U.S. for his involvement with the Shabab.Read the full story here.