Somali bomb suspect tied to Seattle

The FBI is investigating reports that one of the men responsible for a suicide truck-bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, last week, which killed 21 people, was a Seattle man who may have been recruited from the local Somali community, according to federal law-enforcement sources.

Agents are coordinating with immigration officials to track down the man's relatives, who live in the area, two sources said.

The man's name and his ties to the United States were found on a Somali-language Web site affiliated with al-Shabaab — a terrorist group with ties to al-Qaida — that has claimed responsibility for last week's attack on the African Union troops. The Web site claimed the man had lived in the United States as recently as 2007. A senior federal source confirmed the bureau thinks he is a young man — in his 20s — from the Seattle area.

Special Agent Fred Gutt from the FBI's Seattle field office would confirm only that the agency was aware of the report and was looking into it.

The federal source said the FBI is "conducting an active investigation" that involves Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is coordinating with the U.S. Attorney's Office.

If the report is accurate, it would the second time in a few months that a member of the Seattle Somali community — the fourth largest in the country — has been tied to terrorists.

And this is the first time that federal officials have acknowledged that the sort of recruitment efforts that have lured as many as 20 young men from the Minneapolis area to fight in Somalia may be at work in Seattle. At least three men from Minneapolis have died, including 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, who blew up himself and 29 others in a suicide bombing at a United Nations checkpoint last fall.

That attack was strikingly similar to last week's bombing. News reports say that the bombers drove vehicles with United Nations markings into the headquarters of an African Union peacekeeping mission in Mogadishu, Somalia, and detonated hundreds of pounds of explosives. The reports said the bombers spoke English.

In July, a 25-year-old graduate of Seattle's Roosevelt High School, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, pleaded guilty in Minnesota to providing support to terrorists in connection with U.S. recruitment efforts by al-Shabaab. His attorney said in court filings that Isse was being recruited to be a suicide bomber.

Isse and another man are cooperating with federal investigators looking into who recruited them and how they were funded.

Isse's mother told The Seattle Times in July that he had traveled from Seattle to Minneapolis, where he was recruited at an area mosque and left for Somalia in 2007. Court documents say he was given an AK-47 and helped build an al-Shabaab training camp.

Last year, Ruben Shumpert of Seattle, an African-American convert to Islam, was reportedly killed in a U.S.-supported rocket attack near Mogadishu after he fled to Somalia, in part, to avoid prison after pleading guilty to gun and counterfeiting charges here. He was reportedly fighting for a group linked to al-Shabaab and al-Qaida in Somalia, according to news reports and federal officials here.

Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, said Wednesday that he has spoken to Minneapolis relatives of the Seattle man now under investigation and was told he was recruited in Seattle. Jamal has been critical of the FBI's response to the reports of terrorist recruitment among Somali refugees.

He said the investigations have been hampered by mistrust in the community after counterterrorism investigations targeted Somali money-changers and then importers of the drug "khat" — which is used almost exclusively among Somalis — in raids after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Dozens of Seattle Somalis were arrested in those raids, and 19 Seattle refugees were indicted in "Operation Somali Express," the khat raids that involved dozens of Somalis in Minneapolis and New York as well. Most of the charges were dismissed, according to court records.

"There is very little trust," Jamal said.

The Seattle office of the FBI recently held an outreach meeting with some Somali community leaders in SeaTac hoping to make inroads into the community, according to KING-TV.

"What is clear now, though, is that Minneapolis is no longer the center of this," Jamal said. "Seattle is now pushed to the front. There are sympathizers and recruiters of al-Shabaab in your city."

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com