ADDING to post no. 2571:
http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.218/pub_detail.asp
“Who is the Imam Consulted by the Ft. Hood Assassin?
A Look at the Terrorist Ties of Anwar al-Aulaqi and the Radicalization Process”
Print this article by Susan Schmidt
Published on November 9th, 2009
SNIPPET: “Anwar al-Aulaqi, the former imam of mosques in Falls Church and San Diego who was a spiritual advisor to two of the 9/11 hijackers is suspected of involvement in terrorist plots directed at the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.
Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen who was imam at Virginia’s Dar al Hijrah on 9/11, moved to Yemen a few months after the attacks. Audiotapes and transcripts of his lectures on waging jihad against the West have been discovered in the password protected computer files of numerous suspects arrested in bombing plots in Europe and North America.
He pronounced suspected Fort Hood slayer Nidal Hasan “a hero” and “a man of conscience” in an internet blog posting Monday.
U.S. officials have believed for several years that Aulaqi’s activities go beyond proseletizing to include recruiting, training, marshaling resources and planning attacks.
“There is good reason to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies,” a U.S. counterterrorism official told The Washington Post last year.
Aulaqi was arrested in Yemen on August 2006 and released in late 2007. Authorities there had little to say about why he was held. In a taped interview posted on a British website after his release, Aulaqi said he did not know why he was held, but said he was interrogated several times by the FBI. Before his arrest, Aulaqi had been teaching at an Islamist university run by Sheik Abd-alMajid al-Zindani, designated a terrorist in 2004 by the United States and the United Nations.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1109/p99s01-duts.html
“Fort Hood shooter, Virginia mosque links probed”
posted November 09, 2009 at 8:12 am EST
SNIPPET: “The British Telegraph first reported the link between Hasan and the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia. The mosque was attended by two hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks and its prayer leader at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, who the Telegraph said was accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organizations.
Al-Awlaki moved to Dar al-Hijrah as imam in January 2001 from the west coast and three months later the September 11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour began attending his services. A third hijacker attended his services in California.
Hasan was praying at Dar al-Hijrah at about the same time and the FBI will now want to investigate whether he met the two terrorists.
The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that an unnamed law enforcement official confirmed that the FBI and Army were investigating links between Hasan and the mosque.
[A]uthorities are still scouring “voluminous” hard drives, multiple e-mail accounts and website trails “to see what’s out there, and to see what it all means,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. “There’s a lot of work being done.” ...
The mosque is one of the biggest in the United States, and the official cautioned that thousands of people go there for prayer services and other events.
The Los Angeles Times said that investigators are also looking into whether Hasan had recently been following Anwar al-Awlaki’s online sermons. Awlaki, a US citizen, left America in 2002 and is believed to be in Yemen, the Times said.
In a blog on his website a post today attributed to Awlaki read:
Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. ...”