“I LOVE you and I am doing this for all of us.” Ifrah Nur cries as she remembers a Facebook message from Abdi Nur, her younger brother, in Syria. He believed that the whole Nur family would go to heaven if he died a martyr as a fighter for Islamic State. Ms Nur says she has not heard from her brother for a year and half, and does not know whether he is dead or alive.

The testimony of Ms Nur on May 17th, in America’s largest trial of people allegedly recruited by IS, was the most powerful of the statements from FBI agents, work colleagues and family members. Guled Omar (aged 21), Mohamed Farah and Abdirahman Daud (both aged 22), stand accused of conspiracy to commit murder outside America, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organisation, which carries a maximum of 15 years. All three were in touch with Mr Nur, who went to join IS in May 2014. Six other young Somali-Americans have already pleaded guilty to trying to join IS.

The presiding judge, Michael Davis, launched an unusual experiment before the trial started. He recruited Daniel Koehler, the head of the German Institute on Radicalisation and De-radicalisation Studies (GIRDS), to assess six of the men to find out why they became radicalised and whether they might be open to a change of mind. Mr Koehler has so far met five of the six. “Some of them are very difficult cases, though I would never say impossible,” he says. He is also training a group of Minnesotan probation officers in how to change the minds of would-be jihadis.

Such an approach is necessary. Intention, rather than action, is often on trial in these cases, and that can be hard to prove. Abdullahi Yusuf, the first participant in a jihadi rehabilitation programme, is part of Judge Davis’s experiment. A day before his friend Mr Nur left the country, he tried to leave for Syria via Turkey but was stopped by FBI agents at the airport. He went back to community college and a job at Best Buy, a retailer, but was arrested in November 2014. In February Mr Yusuf pleaded guilty to intending to fight for IS. While awaiting sentencing he is receiving counselling from Heartland Democracy, a non-profit group. His mentor there is Ahmed Amin, a Somali-American who moved to America when he was 12 and teaches at Roosevelt High School. “Abdullahi is articulate, smart and comes from a stable family,” says Mr Amin, who tries to see him at least every other week. “It’s hard to understand how he could fall for IS.”

Mr Amin has set his charge a reading list, which includes “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie, a native-american writer whose protagonists struggle with a sense of powerlessness and alienation in a white society, and some works by Michel Foucault, a French post-modernist. There have been some setbacks with Mr Yusuf’s re-education. Judge Davis had allowed him to move to a halfway house, but he had to return to jail after a box cutter was found under his bed. (He says it wasn’t his.)

When Mr Yusuf took the stand to testify against his former friends, he repeatedly contradicted himself and had to own up to “a history of lying” when it was in his interest. A man in the audience whispered to Mr Yusuf’s mother that her son was a spy. A disturbance ensued, and Judge Davis ordered scores of people to leave the courtroom. “The Somali community is deeply divided about the trial,” says Mr Amin. Many are upset about what they see as government over-reach and harsh treatment of misguided young men. Others are aware that the trial is drawing attention to a problem among young Somali-Americans that they wish would go away.