Shirwa Ahmed

Shirwa Ahmed
Born	c. 1983 Somalia
Died	October 29, 2008 Puntland, Somalia
Cause of death	Suicide bombing
Nationality	Naturalized U.S. citizen
Motive	Politics and religion

Shirwa Ahmed was a 26-year-old Somali-American who is the second known American suicide bomber, surpassing Andrew Kehoe.

Overview

Ahmed immigrated to the United States as a child, resided in Minneapolis, Minnesota and entered the Roosevelt High School in September 1996. He became a naturalized American citizen and went on to attend community college before dropping out and worked odd jobs. 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. 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. Motivated by a mixture of politics and religion, he joined Al-Shabaab, a militant Somali group. Then, on October 29, 2008, — or the 28th — he drove a car loaded with explosives into a government compound in Puntland in the northern region of the country. The FBI investigated the incident and returned Ahmed's remains to Minneapolis that November.