Shirwa Mohamud Ahmed was the reluctant terrorist.
The 2000 graduate of Roosevelt High School had fallen in with a small band of men who planned to return to their homeland of Somalia to fight for the militant group al-Shabaab. But in late 2007, he dropped out, saying that Islamic scholars he’d met in Saudi Arabia told him it was wrong to fight.
Somebody changed his mind, though, and he joined other Minneapolis men in Somalia. Once amidst al-Shabaab, he soured on the group and its aims and decided to return to the United States, but the woman who ran one of the terror group’s safe houses wouldn’t give him back his passport.
On Oct. 29, 2008, Ahmed, 26, steered an explosives-laden Toyota SUV into a government compound in northern Somalia and blew himself up, killing 24 people.
“He wanted to come back to the United States, but they wouldn’t let him. He was trapped,” Salah Osman Ahmed, one of the other Minneapolis men, told a jury Tuesday, Oct. 9.
“That is the last person I ever thought about doing that,” he said of his comrade’s death. “He didn’t want to stay with al-Shabaab.”
The saga of Shirwa Ahmed is one of several stories that have emerged in the trial of Mahamud Said Omar, 46, of Minneapolis. The former part-time janitor is accused of conspiracy and providing support to al-Shabaab, which seeks to overthrow Somalia’s government and replace it with a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.
Omar’s trial entered its second week Tuesday. He has maintained his innocence, and his lawyers say he wasn’t involved with terrorists.
The State Department’s 2008 designation of al-Shabaab as a foreign terrorist organization made it a crime to aid the group.
Salah Ahmed was the second of two “travelers” — local men who joined al-Shabaab — to testify against Omar. A third took the witness stand and will continue his testimony Wednesday.
Salah Ahmed, 29, said Omar said he’d pay $1,000 to buy AK-47 assault rifles for himself and another man who were staying at an al-Shabaab safe house in Merca, a coastal city about 43 miles south of the capital of Mogadishu.
But Ahmed acknowledged that he never saw money change hands and was basing his testimony on what the woman who ran the safe house had told him.
He said Omar wasn’t among the men who traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, but that he had shown up on his own and stayed at the safe house four or five days.
The defense says Omar went to Somalia to get married and stopped in Merca to visit a relative.
Ahmed, among a group of two-dozen or so “travelers,” testified that after a group of recruits wound up at an al-Shabaab safe house in Merca, the operator told them they’d need to buy their own weapons.
Ahmed said he didn’t have any money to buy them, but that Omar — whom he knew from Minneapolis as “Sharif” — arrived a few days later.
“Sharif said, ‘I will pay a thousand bucks,’ ” he testified.
“Who did he say that to?” asked Justice Department lawyer William Narus.
Ahmed replied that Omar was addressing the safe house operator and claimed that the woman later said she had gotten the money.
While jurors have seen photos of everyone else whose name has come up in the case, they haven’t seen a photo of the woman because she always remained covered, Ahmed and another witness testified.
Omar paid her other money as well, Ahmed claimed.
He said after Omar allegedly paid the $1,000, two guns showed up and one had Omar’s name written in tape on its handguard. By the time the weapons arrived, Omar had left and Ahmed never saw him again.
Ahmed has pleaded guilty to federal charges of providing material support to terrorists, and acknowledged under questioning that he hopes his testimony against Omar will get him a lighter prison sentence.
In a cross-examination, defense attorney Jon Hopeman challenged Ahmed about lies he told FBI agents the first few times they questioned him.
He admitted to pleading guilty to aiding terrorists, and Hopeman asked him about it.
“You are a terrorist, aren’t you?” the lawyer asked.
“No, I am not.”
“Are you a junior terrorist?”
“No, I am not.”
“Are you an assistant terrorist?”
“No, I am not.”
“Yet you pled guilty to providing material support to terrorists,” Hopeman said.
Ahmed said he went to Somalia to fight the Ethiopian troops, who were aided the country’s U.N.-backed transitional government.
The witness said he went to fight jihad, an Arabic word meaning “struggle,” but in this context means “holy war.” Hopeman asked if he had gone to fight for his religion.
“We didn’t fight for religion,” Ahmed replied. “We went for nationalism.”
But he said he knew he’d wind up fighting.
“You intended to get a gun and shoot at people, didn’t you?” Hopeman asked.
“Ethiopians, not civilians,” Ahmed replied.
He explained that as he viewed it, Ethiopia had invaded the country.
Ahmed was born in Mogadishu and his family moved to Kenya in 1999. That was eight years after a coup sent Somalia into a downward spiral that saw the rise of warlords and clans and no functioning government.
“You never saw him give anyone money, did you?” Hopeman asked Ahmed, referring to Omar.
“I never saw him give anyone money.”
Ahmed is free while he awaits sentencing. But after he testified, Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis modified conditions of the man’s release.
After Ahmed’s testimony, the judge called the man’s attorney, James Ostgard, forward and told him he wanted Ahmed placed back on “location monitoring” and wanted his passport turned over.
Ostgard asked why.
“I listened to his testimony,” the judge replied.
“I want to know where he’s at, unless you want me to take him into custody,” the judge added.