FBI Announces Identity of Transitional Federal Government Checkpoint Suicide Bomber

Donald E. Oswald, Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis Office of the FBI, today announces the identity of one of the two suicide bombers responsible for the suicide bombing attack at a Transitional Federal Government checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia on May 30, 2011. One suicide bomber has been positively identified as Farah Mohamed Beledi. Following the attack, the FBI obtained fingerprints of one of the bombers and forwarded them to the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Those fingerprints were compared against the known fingerprints of Beledi, and a positive match was made. The FBI is continuing efforts to identify the unknown suicide bomber.

Beledi, 27 years old, was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in Minneapolis in July 2010. He is one of thirteen men from the Twin Cities who have been charged with terrorism offenses for traveling to Somalia and joining the designated terrorist organization al-Shabaab. Beledi was charged with, among other things, conspiring to and providing material support to al-Shabaab, and conspiring to kill, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad. He is believed to have left Minnesota in October 2009 for Somalia. The men are part of an ongoing FBI investigation into al-Shabaab’s recruitment and radicalization of young Somali men in the Twin Cities.

The FBI’s primary role in this matter is to determine the identities of the suicide bombers and any connection they may have to United States persons, or any terrorist support or recruitment efforts occurring in the United States.