One Twin Cities immigrant who returned home became a suicide bomber, a source says.

By JAMES WALSH, LORA PABST and PAM LOUWAGIE, Star Tribune staff writers, 25 Nov. 2008=

Federal authorities are investigating whether young Somali men who have disappeared in the Twin Cities metro area in recent months have been recruited to fight for terrorist groups in strife-torn Somalia.

A source familiar with the case confirmed Tuesday that there is a high-level investigation of whether six to seven young Somali men and teenagers left the Twin Cities and returned to their homeland to participate in terrorist activities. The source confirmed that one of the people in that group under scrutiny had returned to Somalia around the first of the year and blown himself up in a terrorist-led operation there.

Additionally, E.K. Wilson, spokesman for the Minneapolis office of the FBI, would not confirm an investigation. But he acknowledged the agency’s concern that young Somali men have been returning to Somalia to fight.

He said he could not say whether Shirwa Ahmed, a Twin Cities man named in a KSTP-TV report Tuesday, was one of them.

The station said that federal authorities are investigating whether Ahmed was a terrorism recruiter in the Twin Cities who blew himself up in northern Somalia last month.

“We are aware of the circumstances in Somalia,” Wilson said. “We are aware that a number of individuals throughout the U.S., including Minneapolis, have traveled to Somalia to fight for terrorist groups. But I cannot confirm or deny an investigation at this point.”

A woman who said she was Ahmed’s sister said Tuesday night that her brother left the United States for Saudi Arabia “a year ago.” She said she last spoke to Ahmed about a month ago, when he called her from Yemen.

The woman, who did not want to give her name, said that she has been contacted by the FBI and that officials want her to come to their office for an interview. Asked whether she is going to do that soon, she said, “I don’t know.”

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