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PENTAGON SAYS IT HOSTED RADICAL CLERIC AFTER 9-11

AP foreign, Thursday October 21 2010

WASHINGTON (AP) — Radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki lunched at the Pentagon as part of a program to reach out to moderate Muslims in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a military official said Thursday.

The U.S.-born al-Qaida operative is now on a U.S. kill-or-capture list.

U.S. investigators say e-mails link al-Awlaki to the Army psychiatrist accused of last year’s killings at Fort Hood, Texas. They also say that he helped prepare Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused in the Christmas airline bombing attempt, and that he had links to the failed Times Square bombing.

Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said al-Awlaki was invited to the Department of Defense’s headquarters after 9/11 as part of a broader effort under then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to establish better ties with the Muslim community.

Al-Awlaki’s Pentagon lunch was first reported by Fox News, which cited FBI sources and documents.

The 9/11 Commission reported that al-Awlaki was interviewed at least four times in two weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks about his dealings with three of the hijackers aboard the flight that slammed into the Pentagon. But it said it didn’t know enough about Al-Awlaki’s relationship with the hijackers to say whether he was aware of the plot.

The report said he had also been investigated by the FBI in 1999 and 2000 for having been “contacted by a possible procurement agent for (Osama) bin Laden” and for connections to extremist fundraising groups. None of the investigations led to criminal charges against him.

Born in New Mexico, al-Awlaki at first served primarily as an inspiration for would-be militant fighters. But intelligence agents said he later took on an operational role, prompting the Obama administration to add him to the government’s list of wanted terror suspects. He’s now thought to be hiding in Yemen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9323252

Al-QAEDA PROPAGANDIST ANWAR AL-AWLAKI SENTENCED TO TEN YEARS IN PRISON -

Fugitive al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki has received a ten year sentence for his role in the murder of a French energy contractor.

11:17AM GMT 17 Jan 2011

A Yemeni criminal court said the killing of Jacques Spagnolo was “committed under the incitement” of al-Awlaki. It held Othman al-Awlaki, a relative of al-Awlaki who is also on the run, guilty on the same charges. Hisham Mohammad Assem, who gunned down Mr Spagnolo near Sana’a in October, has been given a death sentence.

Prosecutors have said that al-Awlaki corresponded with Assem for months, encouraging him to kill foreigners.

Mr Spagnolo, who worked for energy group OMV, was gunned down at the company’s compound in Sanaa on October 6, the same day a British embassy car was targeted in a rocket attack.

Assem was overpowered and arrested.

Mohammed al-Saqqaf, a lawyer for both Anwar and Othman al-Awlaki, told the court that the pair had no “connection or contact” with Assem.

Assem’s lawyer, too, denied that his client had been in touch with al-Awlaki.

“I reject the verdict and will appeal,” Assem said from the court security cage.

Witnesses, however, testified in court that they saw Assem fire on Spagnolo, with one saying that after the killing the defendant “went looking for the manager of OMV, an American national, to kill him.”

Earlier this year President Barack Obama’s administration authorised the killing of US-born al-Awlaki, the first citizen of the country to be thus targeted.

Al-Awlaki has been linked to a US army major charged with shooting dead 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas in November 2009 and to a Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on December 25 that year.

In a video posted on extremist websites, al-Awlaki has called for the killing of Americans “without hesitation.” “It’s either us or you,” al-Awlaki said, addressing Americans in the video.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has seen intense fighting in recent months between al-Qaeda terrorists and the country’s armed forces.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/8263858/Al-Qaeda-propagandist-Anwar-al-Awlaki-sentenced-to-ten-years-in-prison.html