International Assessment and Strategy Center > Research > Who is the Imam Consulted by the Ft. Hood Assassin?

International Assessment and Strategy Center > Research > Who is the Imam Consulted by the Ft. Hood Assassin?: "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.

Aulaqi’s suspected role in terrorist activity deepens lingering questions about the FBI’s conclusion that the 19 hijackers carried out their attack without aid from others in this country.

Aulaqi befriended two of the future hijackers at his San Diego mosque in 2000; when he was hired early the next year by Dar al Hijra, two of the hijackers also moved east to the Falls Church mosque."