Shirwa Ahmed

Shirwa Ahmed was a 26-year old Somali-American who is the second known American suicide bomber, surpassed by Andrew Kehoe.^[1][2]

Overview

Ahmed immigrated to the United States as a child, resided in Minneapolis, Minnesota and entered the Roosevelt High School in September 1996.^[1] He became a naturalized American citizen^[2] and went on to attend community college before dropping out and worked odd jobs.^[1] In 2004, Ahmed began associating with a new group of friends perceived as having been religious; he was "radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota" according to Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.^[1] He was one of twenty Somali-American men who departed the Minneapolis area for Somalia, a trend which has been the focus of one of the larger domestic terrorism investigations since September 11, 2001.^[1] Motivated by a mixture of politics and religion, he joined Al-Shabaab, a militant Somali group.^[1] Then, on October 29, 2008, — or the 28th^[2] — he drove a car loaded with explosives into a government compound in Puntland in the northern region of the country.^[1] The FBI investigated the incident and returned Ahmed's remains to Minneapolis that November.^[1]

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