Jamal Bana Death Photos - Jamal Bana Shot Pictures

Abayte Ahmed and her husband learned of their son's death in the most heinous fashion. A family acquaintance called and told them to click on an Internet site. There on the screen were photographs of their 20-year-old son the boy with the movie-star looks shot through the head thousands of miles away in Somalia.

He must have been somewhat disillusioned and indoctrinated, because he didn't have any clue about Somalia at all," his mother said, fighting back tears and barely able to speak about her eldest son.

Jamal Bana had been missing for months from his Minneapolis home. His family is still grappling with the circumstances surrounding his death in a land they had fled an African nation wracked by chaos and violence.

The FBI said Bana's death is part of a sweeping federal investigation into a recruiting effort in the United States by a Somali terrorist group called Al-Shabaab, which has ties to al Qaeda. More than a dozen young men of Somali descent have disappeared from the Minneapolis area in recent months. At least three, including Bana, have ended up dead in Somalia, community leaders say.


Bana was the kind of son a modest immigrant family pins its hopes on. He was the eldest of seven and studying engineering at local colleges. But last fall, his family said, he disappeared without any warning. A few days later, the phone rang. All that could be heard was a quick sentence. "I'm in Somalia," his mother quoted him as saying. He then hung up.

Communication from then on was scarce. In calls or text messages, the family said, Bana was guarded, as though someone was watching or listening to him.


On July 11, the family received the call telling them to look on the Internet. Bana's father broke down in tears when he saw the photos. One image was a close-up of his son's face, a bullet wound on one side of his head. Another showed the body being carried through the streets of Mogadishu on a stretcher.

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