Fort Hood shooting: Texas army killer linked to September 11 terrorists*

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam
said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked
America on Sept 11, 2001.

By Philip Sherwell and Alex Spillius
Published: 8:17PM GMT 07 Nov 2009
The Telegraph

The radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of supporting attacks on
British troops

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in
Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls,
Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11
terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was
held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni
scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link
in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops
and backing terrorist organisations.

Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's
teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in
Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.

As investigators look at Hasan's motives and mindset, his attendance at
the mosque could be an important piece of the jigsaw. 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.

Charles Allen, a former under-secretary for intelligence at the
Department of Homeland Security, has described al-Awlaki, who now lives
in Yemen, as an "al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to
three of the September 11 hijackers... who targets US Muslims with
radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home
in Yemen".

Last night Hasan remained in a coma under guard at a military hospital
in San Antonio, Texas, and was said to be in a "stable" condition. Born
in America to a Palestinian family, Hasan, 39, was an army psychiatrist
who had chosen to sign up for the US military against his parents' wishes.

But he turned into an angry critic of the wars America was waging in
Iraq and Afghanistan and had tried in vain to negotiate his discharge.

He counselled soldiers returning from the front line and told relatives
that he was horrified at the prospect of a deployment to Afghanistan
later this year – his first time in a combat zone.

Whether due to his personal convictions, his stress over his deployment
or other reasons, Hasan is alleged to have snapped and gone on a
murderous rampage with a powerful semi-automatic handgun after shouting
"Allahu Akhbar" ("God is great"), according to survivors. He had earlier
given away copies of the Koran to neighbours.

Investigators at this stage have no indication that he planned the
attacks with anyone else. But they are trawling through his phone
records, paperwork and computers he used before the attack during an
apparently sleepless night.

Five of the 13 victims were fellow mental health professionals from
three units of the army's Combat Stress Control Detachment, it was
disclosed yesterday.

It is understood that Hasan had been due to be deployed with members of
those units in coming months. Whether he deliberately singled out other
combat stress counsellors is another key question.

What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red
flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks.

"I was shocked but not surprised by news of Thursday's attack," said Dr
Val Finnell, a fellow student on a public health course in 2007-08 who
heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam. Another
student had warned military officials that Hasan was a "ticking time
bomb" after he reportedly gave a presentation defending suicide bombers.

Kamran Pasha, the author of Mother of the Believers, a new novel
relating the story of Islam from the perspective of Aisha, Prophet
Mohammed's wife, was told of the al-Awlaki connection from a Muslim
friend who is also an officer at Fort Hood. Using the name Richard, the
recent convert to Islam described how he frequently prayed with Hasan at
the town mosque after Hasan was deployed to Fort Hood in July. They last
worshipped together at predawn prayers on the day of the massacre when
Hasan "appeared relaxed and not in any way troubled or nervous".

But Richard had previously argued with Hasan when he said that he felt
the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, expressed
anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings.

"I asked Richard whether he believed that Hasan was motivated by
religious radicalism in his murderous actions," Mr Pasha said.

"Richard, with great sadness, said that he believed this was true. He
also believed that psychological factors from Hasan's job as an army
psychiatrist added to his pathos. The news that he would be deployed
overseas, to a war that he rejected, may have pushed him over the edge.

"But Richard does not excuse Hasan. As a Muslim, he finds Hasan's
religious perspectives to be fundamentally misguided. And as a soldier,
he finds Hasan's actions cowardly and evil."

Fellow Muslims in the US armed forces have also been quick to denounce
Hasan's actions and insist that they were the product of a lone
individual rather than of Islamic teachings. Osman Danquah, the
co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said Hasan never
expressed anger toward the army or indicated any plans for violence.

But he said that, at their second meeting, Hasan seemed almost incoherent.

"I told him, 'There's something wrong with you'. I didn't get the
feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right."

He was sufficiently troubled that he recommended the centre reject
Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood.

Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities
before Thursday's massacre. He was suspected of being the author of
internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw
themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been
warned about proselytising to patients.

At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed
Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors". He made no attempt
to hide his desire to end his military service early or his
mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. "He had
people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there,"
said his cousin, Nader Hasan.

Yet away from his strident attacks on US foreign policy, he came across
as subdued and reclusive – not hostile or threatening. Soldiers he
counselled at the Walter Reed hospital in Washington praised him, while
at Fort Hood, Kimberly Kesling, the deputy commander of clinical
services, remarked: "Up to this point, I would consider him an asset."

Relatives said that the death of Hasan's parents, in 1998 and 2001,
turned him more devout. "After he lost his parents he tried to replace
their love by reading a lot of books, including the Koran," his uncle
Rafiq Hamad said.

"He didn't have a girlfriend, he didn't dance, he didn't go to bars."

His failed search for a wife seemed to haunt Hasan. At the Muslim
Community Centre in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, he signed up
for an Islamic matchmaking service, specifying that he wanted a bride
who wore the hijab and prayed five times a day.

Adnan Haider, a retired professor of statistics, recalled how at their
first meeting last year, a casual introduction after Friday prayers,
Hasan immediately asked the academic if he knew "a nice Muslim girl" he
could marry.

"It was a strange thing to ask someone you have met two seconds before.
It was clear to me he was under pressure, you could just see it in his
face," said Prof Haider, 74, who used to work at Georgetown University
in Washington. "You could see he was lonely and didn't have friends.

"He is working with psychiatric people and I ask why the people around
him didn't spot that something was wrong? When I heard what had happened
I actually wasn't that surprised."

Indeed, many of the characteristics attributed to Hasan by acquaintances
– withdrawn, unassuming, brooding, socially awkward and never known to
have had a girlfriend – have also applied to other mass murderers.

Hasan was born and brought up in Virginia to parents who ran restaurants
after emigrating to America from the West Bank. He graduated from
Virginia Tech university – coincidentally, the scene of the worst mass
shooting in US history in 2007 – with a degree in biochemistry and then
joined the army, which trained him as a psychiatrist.

Relatives said that he was subjected to increasingly ugly taunts about
his religion and ethnicity from other soldiers after the September 11
attacks. But his uncle insisted yesterday that Hasan would not have been
driven to mass murder by revenge or religion.

Speaking in the West Bank town of al-Bireh, Mr Hamad said his nephew
"loved America" and could only have been caused to snap by an as yet
unexplained factor. "He always said there was no country in the world
like America," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "Something big happened to
him in Texas. If he did it – and until now I am in denial – it had to
have been something huge because revenge was not in his nature."