al Amriki – Charges Await Al Qaeda-Linked American Terrorist
September 4, 2009 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
A week after the 9/11 attacks, a young Muslim at South Alabama University told the school’s newspaper it was “difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this.” Now, eight years later, he is professing to launch attacks himself and calling on others to join the fight, as terror-related charges await him at home in Alabama.
Abu Mansour al-Amriki — or “The American” — has become one of the most recognizable and outspoken voices of terrorist propaganda.
He has been in war-torn Somalia for several years, fighting the secular government there with a group known as al-Shabaab, which has ties to Al Qaeda and was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government last year. Only recently has he taken on a starring — and jarring — role in al-Shabaab’s outreach efforts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into him for several years. In fact, a grand jury in Mobile, Ala., has already indicted him on charges of providing material support to terrorists, a source said. It’s unclear when the indictment was filed.
Al-Amriki first surfaced in October 2007, when Al-Jazeera TV aired a report about the “common goal” of Al Qaeda and hard-line militants in Somalia. The report described al-Amriki as “a fighter” and “military instructor,” but he concealed his face with a cloth wrap throughout the report.
In April, he showed his face for the first time, during a highly-polished, 30-minute recruitment video posted online. It featured anti-American hip-hop and sporadic images of Usama bin Laden.
In the video, he purportedly led a group of al-Shabaab militants in an ambush of pro-government forces in Somalia. Speaking about one man killed in the fight, he said, “We need more like him, so if you can encourage more of your children and more of your neighbors, anyone around, to send people like him to this jihad, it would be a great asset for us.”
The violent world that 25-year-old al-Amriki now inhabits is a stark contrast to the sleepy, suburban life he left behind.
