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LAURA YUEN: Farah Beledi's elderly mother, frail with asthma, rests her swollen feet while sitting in an armchair in her tiny apartment at a St. Paul high-rise. Mumina Roba says at first, she didn't believe the news from family in Nairobi, Kenya, that her son was dead. Not until she saw the picture.

MPR News obtained images of the blast from African Union officials last week. One photo shows a dead man with his eyes halfway open. His face covered with a shrapnel. AU officials say he was killed before he could activate his bombs. But they believe a second man blew himself up. Roba asked to look at the photo against warnings that it might be too painful to see.

Roba and two of her sons say there's no doubt that the dead man in the picture is Beledi. The explosion also killed two African Union troops and a government official. But Roba can't explain how an American kid who fled civil war in a refugee camp could have been indoctrinated to kill himself and others.

She says, I don't know what got inside him. The youth around here are not under control. When he was going to school, sometimes he was gone for three days at a time.

Beledi's family paints a portrait of a man who was leading a life of dead ends before he left for Somalia in late 2009. Court records show Beledi pleaded guilty in 2007 to stabbing a man in the neck and his side during a soccer game at Central High School in St. Paul. Family members say he was locked up for about two years. No one from the family visited him in prison.

By that time, their relationships with Beledi were already strained. Abdulahi Beledi says he and his younger brother came to the US with their mom in 1996 when Farah Beledi was 12. During high school, Farah began cutting class and getting into trouble.

ABDULAHI BELEDI: Then I told him, hey, this good country's opportunity. You're so young. So why?

I thought I give advice. But he don't do it. So we don't have a good relationship.

LAURA YUEN: Abdulahi Beledi says the last time he saw his little brother was seven years ago. Once Farah Beledi turned 18, the family doesn't know where he lived or what crowd he hung out with. Beledi never knew his father, who died when he was a baby. But after he was released from prison in 2009, Beledi didn't fly entirely under the radar.

While acquaintances say he struggled to find work because of his felony record, he became more absorbed in his Islamic faith. He attended the Abubakar As-Saddique mosque in Minneapolis, the largest Somali mosque in the state. This was one place where most of the 20 or so young men worshipped and gathered before traveling to Somalia, allegedly to fight alongside the extremist group al-Shabab.

Beledi also started counseling troubled youth as an outreach worker in the Somali-American community. He met young men at the Somali malls, using his own record of bad choices and hard time as an example. One community member says Beledi was effective in his message because he had the street cred to back up his cautionary tales.

FARAH BELEDI: Before I was involved in gangs and drug dealing and things like that, I even went to prison.

LAURA YUEN: This is Beledi addressing reporters during the height of the controversy surrounding the Abubakar mosque in February 2009. Beledi told the crowd that the mosque helped him break free of his criminal past and gave him a new purpose in life. He defended the mosque from allegations from some community members that officials there brainwashed the young men.

FARAH BELEDI: Let me ask just one question. Can I blame any other than myself for the mistakes I have made in my past? No. I can only blame myself.

Even my parents used to tell me what I was doing was wrong. But I never listened to them. Everyone makes their own choice in life. The same way, Abubakar center cannot be blamed for the missing youth what they did.

LAURA YUEN: The FBI says there is no evidence mosque leaders had anything to do with the missing men. But just eight months after Beledi spoke at the mosque, he was on his way to Somalia following the same pipeline that brought so many other young Twin Cities men before him. A year after the federal investigation started, friends say he slipped across the Mexico border with a suspected recruiter from the Twin Cities who had been under FBI scrutiny. Community members who knew Beledi say they think it's his voice on an audio recording on a Somali website released after his death.

SPEAKER: Would like to talk to my brothers and sisters out there in the West and wherever you are. Brothers, come. Come to jihad. We are welcoming you and calling you to jihad.

LAURA YUEN: The FBI has not confirmed Beledi's identity. But a spokesman says the agency is working to identify the remains from the bombing. Laura Yuen, Minnesota Public Radio News.