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Called to Fight
Tim Nelson

Series on jihadi recruitment for HBO will be set in Minnesota

Director Kathryn Bigelow
Director Kathryn Bigelow will be the executive producer of a new HBO series about jihadi recruitment. Here, she attended a 2014 Academy Awards event in Los Angeles.
Valerie Macon | Getty Images 2014

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The HBO cable network is developing a TV drama about jihadi recruitment that will be set in Minnesota.

The New York Times reports Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow, director of "The Hurt Locker," will be the executive producer on the series, titled "The Recruiters."

K'naan Warsame
Rapper and poet K'naan Warsame
Michael Buckner Getty Images 2009

Canadian rapper and poet K'naan Warsame, a native of Somalia, will write the script and direct the show. The Hollywood Reporter says the show will "unveil what is considered a world that's hidden in plain sight" and "draw open an iron curtain behind which viewers will see the highly impenetrable world of Jihadi recruitment."

Warsame recently posted a casting call for a "young Somali man" on Twitter.

The producers held a casting call at the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis on Nov. 28, and are also planning open casting calls in San Diego, Toronto and Columbus, Ohio.

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Authorities have investigated a number of young Minnesota men — most of them of Somali descent — who left to fight for al-Shabab in East Africa starting in late 2007, but more recently to join ISIS. Federal prosecutors have charged 10 Twin Cities men with planning to join the terror group in Syria.