Yemen Terrorists

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Mystery of Al Awlaki

WHO IS Al-AWLAKI

American Muslim extremist Anwar al-Awlaki is a mystery to the CIA. Who is he. Where did he come from. Why had CIA not heard of him before. How come he managed to escape US and hide in Yemen. Why did it so long to put him on terror list... etc etc.

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BBC PROFILE: AL AWLAKI - Sunday, 3 January 2010

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8438635.stm

Mr Awlaki returned to Yemen in early 2004 and became a lecturer in Sanaa

Profile: Anwar al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, has been linked to a series of attacks and plots across the world - from 11 September 2001 to the shootings at Fort Hood in November 2009.

Since going on the run in Yemen in December 2007, Mr Awlaki's overt endorsement of violence as a religious duty in his sermons and on the internet is thought to have inspired new recruits to Islamist militancy.

Senior US officials now believe these may include Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , the young Nigerian man accused of attempting to blow up a passenger jet as it flew into Detroit on Christmas Day.

Yemeni security officials said Mr Awlaki might have been killed in an airstrike on a suspected al-Qaeda base in the country's south that was directed by US intelligence.

However, friends and relatives say he was not harmed in the raid.

Hijackers

Mr Awlaki was born in 1971 in the southern US state of New Mexico, where his father, Nasser, a future Yemeni agriculture minister and university president, was studying agricultural economics.

After spending his teenage years in Yemen, where he studied Islam, Mr Awlaki returned to the US to gain a degree in civil engineering from Colorado State University and a master's in education at San Diego State.

Mr Awlaki became an imam at a mosque in Fort Collins, Colorado, before returning to San Diego in 1996, where he took charge of the city's Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque.

During his four years there, his sermons were attended by two future 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

In early 2001, he moved to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, which was attended by Mr Hazmi and a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour.

The 9/11 Commission later found the connections to be suspicious, though law enforcement officials said they doubted he knew of the plot.

The following year, he left the US for the UK, where he spent several months giving a series of lectures to Muslim youths.

Prison

Mr Awlaki returned to Yemen in early 2004, and lived in his ancestral village in the southern province of Shabwa with his wife and children.

He soon became a lecturer at al-Iman University, a Sunni religious school in Sanaa headed by Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, a cleric who has been designated a terrorist by both the US and UN for his suspected links with al-Qaeda.

In 2004, Zindani was listed as a "specially designated global terrorist" by the US Treasury Department and the UN, but Yemen has taken no steps to freeze his assets.

Former students include John Walker Lindh , known as the "American Taliban", and several suspected militants.

Mr Awlaki may have met Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at al-Iman University, while the latter was studying Arabic, sometime in November or December 2009 as the 23-year-old was receiving his final training and indoctrination from members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula , ahead of his alleged suicide mission.

"There are indications that he had contact, direct contact with Abdulmutallab," John Brennan, the US deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counter-terrorism, told CNN.

In August 2006, Mr Awlaki was detained by the Yemeni authorities, reportedly on charges relating to a plot to kidnap a US military attache.

He has said he was interviewed by FBI agents during his subsequent 18 months in prison, and believes the US asked the Yemeni authorities to prolong his detention.

Since his release, Mr Awlaki's message has been overtly supportive of violence.

He has published a number of inciteful texts via his website, his Facebook page and many booklets and CDs, including one called "44 Ways to Support Jihad".

Such materials have been found in the possession of several convicted English-speaking militants in Canada, the UK and US.

It also emerged after the Fort Hood incident that Mr Awlaki had given the US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people, Maj Nidal Malik Hasan , religious advice by email. He had also seen Mr Awlaki preach in Virginia in 2001.

In July, the cleric posted a blog saying a Muslim soldier who fought other Muslims was a "heartless beast, bent on evil, who sells his religion for a few dollars". Following the shootings, Mr Awlaki called Maj Hasan a hero.

"My support to the operation was because the operation brother Nidal carried out was a courageous one," he told al-Jazeera in November.

"And I endeavoured to explain my position regarding what happened because many Islamic organisations and preachers in the West condemned the operation."

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BBC PROFILE AQAP - Sunday, 3 January 2010

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has promised "total war on all crusaders"

Profile: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

AL-QAEDA OFFSHOOT

- Formed in January 2009 by a merger between al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and Yemen
Based in eastern Yemen
- Led by Nasser al-Wuhayshi, a Yemeni former aide to Osama Bin Laden. Deputy leader is Saudi ex-Guantanamo inmate Said al-Shihri
- Aims to topple Saudi monarchy and Yemeni government, and establish an Islamic caliphate
- Came to prominence with Riyadh bombings in 2003, and 2008 attack on US embassy in Sanaa
- Blamed for attempt to blow up US passenger jet in December 2009


Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was formed in January 2009 by a merger between two regional offshoots of the international Islamist militant network in neighbouring Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Led by a former aide to Osama Bin Laden , the group has vowed to attack oil facilities, foreigners and security forces as it seeks to topple the Saudi monarchy and Yemeni government, and establish an Islamic caliphate.

It has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in the two countries over the past 12 months, and has been blamed by President Barack Obama for attempting to blow up a US passenger jet as it flew into Detroit on Christmas Day.

A Nigerian man charged in relation to the incident, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , has allegedly told investigators that AQAP operatives trained him in Yemen, equipped him with a powerful explosive device and told him what to do.

He also warned there were others like him who would strike soon.

Beheading

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula first came to prominence in Saudi Arabia in May 2003, when it claimed responsibility for simultaneous suicide bombing attacks on three Western housing compounds in Riyadh , which left 29 dead.

Despite a subsequent crackdown on Islamist militants and radicals by the Saudi security forces, the group was able to mount an attack on the Muhayyah residential compound in the capital that November, killing 17 people.

In 2004, it suffered a major blow when its leader, Khaled Ali Hajj - a Yemeni and former bodyguard of Bin Laden - was ambushed and killed by Saudi troops.

However, the group soon recovered under the guidance of a veteran Saudi militant, Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin , and launched a series of spectacular attacks.

On 1 May 2004, militants shot dead five Western workers at a petrochemical complex in the north-western Red Sea city of Yanbu. On 29 May, more than 20 foreign and Saudi nationals were killed in attacks on three sites in the city of al-Khobar, increasing fears of political instability and pushing up global oil prices.

The following month, members of AQAP abducted and beheaded a 49-year old American aerospace worker named Paul Johnson.

The triumph was short-lived, however, as when security forces stormed a hideout in Riyadh looking for Johnson's murderers Muqrin was shot dead.

Although militants killed at least nine people in a raid on the US consulate in Jeddah in December 2004, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula enjoyed notably less success under Muqrin's successor, Salih al-Awfi .

The Saudi security services gradually gained the upper hand, and succeed in preventing any major attacks the following year, when Awfi was himself killed during a police raid in the holy city of Medina.

In spite of the large numbers of Saudis who then travelled to militant training camps and gained experience fighting in places such as Iraq, the group found it increasingly difficult to organise operational cells inside the kingdom. Its last attempt a significant attack was at the Abqaiq oil facility in February 2006 .

Prison escape

Meanwhile in Yemen - the ancestral home of Bin Laden - Sunni militants took advantage of the weak central government, whose authority does not extend far outside the capital Sanaa, and established strongholds in its largely autonomous tribal regions.

Although al-Qaeda cells were held responsible for several attacks inside Yemen since the suicide boat attack on the USS Cole near the port of Aden in 2000 that killed 17 US sailors, it was not until the second half of the decade that a fully-functioning affiliated group was formed.

According to Gregory Johnsen of Princeton University, between 2002 and 2003 the Yemeni government co-operated closely with the US to fight al-Qaeda. By the end of that period - which included one leader being killed in a controversial strike by a CIA drone aircraft - al-Qaeda appeared to be substantially weakened and so both countries shifted focus.

The policy appeared to have worked until February 2006, Mr Johnsen says, when 23 suspected al-Qaeda members managed to escape from a prison in Sanaa , including Jamal al-Badawi, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing.

Most were eventually either recaptured or killed, but two of the lesser-known escapees eluded the authorities, including Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, a former personal assistant to Bin Laden in Afghanistan, and Qasim al-Raymi.

A 33-year-old from the southern governorate of al-Baida, Wuhayshi spent time in religious institutions in Yemen before travelling to Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He fought at the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, before escaping over the border into Iran, where he was eventually arrested. He was extradited to Yemen in 2003.

After escaping from prison, Wuhayshi and Raymi are said to have overseen the formation of al-Qaeda in Yemen, which took in both new recruits and experienced Arab fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Protected by tribes who were wary of government interference, the group established bases from which to launch fresh attacks.

The group claimed responsibility for two suicide bomb attacks that killed six Western tourists before being linked to the assault on the US embassy in Sanaa in September 2008 , in which militants detonated bombs and fired rocket-propelled grenades. Ten Yemeni guards and four civilians were killed, along with six assailants.

Four months later, Wuhayshi announced in a video the merger of the al-Qaeda offshoots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia to form "al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in the Arabian Peninsula".

Analysts say the move was designed to bring Saudi al-Qaeda members who had fled their country and Yemeni militants together under one umbrella as a first step towards launching attacks throughout the region.

Next to Wuhayshi and Raymi in the same video sat the new group's deputy leader, Said Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi national who was released from the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in November 2007.

Another former detainee, Mohammed Atiq al-Harbi, also known as Mohammed al-Awfi, appeared alongside them and was described as a field commander.

Embarrassingly for both Riyadh and Washington, both men had been released from Guantanamo into the custody of the Saudi government's "deradicalisation" programme for militants, which includes art therapy. They both left the facility within weeks.

The group's first operation outside Yemen was carried out in Saudi Arabia in August 2009 against the kingdom's security chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, though he survived. The bomber concealed a bomb containing the high-explosive PETN (pentaerythritol) inside his body.

After news of the failed attempt to destroy the Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 emerged, AQAP released a statement saying it had sought to avenge recent raids by Yemeni forces aided by US intelligence , in which dozens of militants are reported to have died.

"We tell the American people that since you support the leaders who kill our women and children... we have come to slaughter you [and] will strike you with no previous [warning], our vengeance is near," the group said.

"We call on all Muslims... to throw out all unbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula by killing crusaders who work in embassies or elsewhere... [in] a total war on all crusaders in the Peninsula of Muhammad."

Reports on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's membership vary wildly - some experts say there are fewer than 50 fighters, while others believe there may be 200 to 300 - but most agree that if it is left unmolested it will soon become a major threat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8437724.stm

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BBC - Tuesday, 5 January 2010

"The country's going to hell. The crises are converging with each other"

Dr Abdullah al-Faqih, Professor of political science, Sanaa University

Al-Qaeda's influence in Yemen

By Jeremy Bowen, Middle East editor - BBC News, Yemen

To get an idea of the state of mind of the men here in Yemen who run al-Qaeda in the Arabia peninsula, just take a look at what they said about the failed attack on the US airliner on Christmas Day.

In a swaggering and ambitious statement, they claimed that they sent the Nigerian student onto the plane, and that he only failed because of a technical fault with the bomb.

For them, getting that close counts as the next best thing to a successful mission.

And take just one look at the terrain of this country to understand why al-Qaeda is feeling so comfortable here, relaxed enough for one of its leaders reportedly to have moved his wife and family down from Saudi Arabia.

Yemen's mountains are rugged, hard to reach, and best of all from a jihadi point of view, they are not controlled by the central government.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula established itself in Yemen after it was forced out of Saudi Arabia, taking advantage of the fact that large swathes of Yemeni territory are controlled by powerful, well-armed tribes, not by a government that is getting closer to the US and its counter-terrorism advisers than ever.

Already there are claims and counter-claims of a kind that are familiar from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

On 17 and 24 December al-Qaeda sites in Yemen were attacked. Reports based on American sources suggested that 60 "militants" had been killed.

Children killed?

It has been reported in the United States that American military forces carried out the attacks.

But local journalists here who say they have visited the sites in question tell a different story.

Abdulelah Hider Shaea, who has close connections with al-Qaeda, told me that people at the places that were attacked insist that dozens of women and children were among the dead.

It is the belief of at least one person there, he said, that the Yemeni government and US President Barack Obama were congratulating each other on killing their children.

Making deals with tribes that have lost large numbers of women and children in government attacks will be very difficult.

Mr Shaea said that al-Qaeda in Yemen believes that American actions will bring it recruits.

And he compared Yemen with Pakistan's tribal areas.

"The United States wants to fight al-Qaeda here. It won't work, they'll make this a new Waziristan, exporting fighters all over the world."

A diverse range of observers, in Yemen and abroad, agree that a heavy-handed counter-terrorism strategy will create more problems than it will solve.

But alternatives to military action move slowly and do not guarantee success either.

In Washington, President Obama is under pressure to take action. The Christmas Day attempted attack over Detroit may have failed, but it brought back instant memories of 9/11. Military action will continue.

Numerous problems

Al-Qaeda is not Yemen's only problem.

Saudi Arabia has intervened in the long-running tribal war in the north. A separatist movement in the south wants Yemen to be divided back into two countries.

The poor are getting poorer. Levels of illiteracy are high. The birth rate is the highest in the Middle East.

Its main export, oil, will run out within the next 10 years and new gas fields do not appear to be lucrative enough to replace it.

Yemen's water supply is also running dry, not least because of the amount that is used to irrigate the fields of khat.

Chewing khat leaves, which are a mild stimulant, is the national pastime.

Yemen's President Ali Abdallah Saleh surrounds himself with members of his own clan and adroitly juggles all the other forces in Yemen to stay in power.

It is a strategy that has worked for 30 years. But his government is accused of being not just ineffective, but also riddled with corruption.

So the US, Britain and Saudi Arabia, are looking even more nervous about Yemen and its list of challenges.

They will have a chance to talk about what to do next in a meeting in London at the end of the month.

When I asked Dr Abdullah al-Faqih, professor of political science at Sanaa University about Yemen's position, he was succinct.

"The country's going to hell. The crises are converging with each other."

The risk, he said, was that Yemen would go the same way as Somalia, its neighbour across the Gulf of Aden, which descended into violent and bloody confusion a generation ago and has never emerged.

Yemen is not Somalia, nor Afghanistan. At least not yet. It is not a failed state, but it is failing.

Holding back chaos

It will be very hard to stabilise matters here, but it is not impossible.

Many Yemenis are devout, but that does not make them jihadis. The tribes are powerful and traditionally are open to making deals.

One strategy for al-Qaeda's enemies could be to pay them to ban al-Qaeda from their territory.

The Saudis and the Americans have plenty of money for that. They don't necessarily have the necessary time, luck and judgement that has to go along with cash.

Action is needed, because all the indications suggest that if matters are left as they are, Yemen will slide steadily into chaos.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8442212.stm

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[ US puts Awlaki first on a hit list first and then on the terror list!!]

BBC - Wednesday, 7 April 2010 17:51 UK

US approves killing US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki

The US government has authorised the capture or killing of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, currently based in Yemen, officials have confirmed.

The cleric, who is a US citizen, is being targeted for his involvement in planning attacks on the US.

Mr Awlaki was linked to the attempted bombing of an airliner bound for the US and a shooting on a US Army base.

US officials have warned that Yemen is becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda militants.

The BBC's Steve Kingstone, in Washington, says it is highly unusual for the CIA to be given approval by the president's National Security Council to target a US citizen.

The order was made by the Obama administration earlier this year, but it has just been revealed after a review of national security policy.

'Serious attacks'

It was first reported in the New York Times and later confirmed to the BBC by US officials.

"Awlaki is a threat to the United States and our allies. He's plotted serious attacks against this country and others. Of course he's a US government target," one official said.

Mr Awlaki was born in New Mexico, and later served as an imam in Colorado, California and Virginia.

He became popular among Islamic radicals for his firebrand preaching in English which endorsed the use of violence as a religious duty.

It was while he was an imam in San Diego that his sermons were attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers.

He fled the US in 2007 and moved to Yemen.

US intelligence previously viewed him as a radical Islamist preacher, but officials say he is now an active recruiter for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Mr Awlaki has been linked to the suspects in the Fort Hood shootings last November in which 13 people died, and a failed attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner on Christmas day.

Potentially, a US attack on him could be in the form of an air strike by an unmanned drone, our correspondent says.

The US military already has approval for such killings, based on a congressional authorisation for war with al-Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks on the US.

Failed state

"Awlaki knows what he's done, and he knows he won't be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone," the New York Times quoted an official as saying.

The Yemeni government, with support from the US and Saudi Arabia, has bombed suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in the last few months.

But some analysts have warned that Yemen may become a failed state because of the fragile hold the Yemeni government has on its own country.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a plane on its way into Detroit airport on Christmas Day 2009, allegedly met Mr Awlaki in Yemen weeks before boarding a US-bound plane in Lagos.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8606584.stm

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BBC: 16 July 2010

US puts Muslim cleric on terror blacklist

Washington has added a US-born Muslim cleric linked to al-Qaeda to its terrorism blacklist and imposed financial sanctions on him.

The move would freeze any US assets of Anwar al-Awlaki, prevent him from travelling to the US and bar Americans from sending him money.

Mr al-Awlaki is suspected of helping plan the failed bombing of an airliner over Detroit last Christmas.

He is thought to be in Yemen with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

US officials have warned Yemen is becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda militants.

He is also thought to have exchanged e-mails with an army officer charged with killing 13 people last November at a military base in Texas.

In April the US government authorised his capture or killing and now the US treasury department has placed him on its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

"Anwar al-Awlaki has proven that he is extraordinarily dangerous, committed to carrying out deadly attacks on Americans and others worldwide," said Stuart Levey, the treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

"He has involved himself in every aspect of the supply chain of terrorism - fund-raising for terrorist groups, recruiting and training operatives, and planning and ordering attacks on innocents," Mr Levey said in a statement.

The Treasury also said that Mr al-Awlaki had pledged an oath of loyalty to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and "facilitated training at camps in Yemen in support of acts of terrorism and helped focus AQAP's attention on planning attacks on US interests".

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested on Christmas Day last year after allegedly trying to blow up a plane he was on that was travelling to Detroit.

The treasury said he had met Mr al-Awlaki and received instructions from him weeks before the failed attack.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10669422

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BBC: Monday 8 November 2010

Yemen Muslim cleric al-Awlaki in US death threat video

A radical US-born Yemeni Islamist cleric has called for the killing of Americans in a new video message posted on radical web sites.

Anwar al-Awlaki said no permission was needed to kill Americans as they are from the "party of devils".

It comes shortly after authorities intercepted air cargo bombs sent from Yemen to the US in a plot linked to Mr Awlaki.

The US has named Mr Awlaki a "specially designated global terrorist".

Investigators have linked Mr Awlaki to the US army base killings in Fort Hood, Texas, last year's Christmas airline bomb attempt, and the failed Times Square bombing in New York.

US officials say he is a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of the militant network based in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

'Leaders are corrupt'

In the 23-minute message posted on Monday, Mr Awlaki called all Arab and Yemeni leaders "corrupt".

"Kings, emirs, and presidents are not now qualified to lead the nation, or even a flock of sheep," he said.

"If the leaders are corrupt, the scholars have the responsibility to lead the nation."

He was shown seated at a desk, wearing traditional Yemeni clothes with a dagger in his belt.

Last week, YouTube removed hundreds of clips of Anwar al-Awlaki's calls to jihad saying they violated a ban on hate speech and incitement to violence.

Last month, investigators working for New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, reported finding more than 700 videos in which Mr Awlaki appeared. The clips had garnered more than 3.5m hits.

Mr Awlaki, an American-born cleric of Yemeni descent, is said to be on a CIA hit list authorised by President Barack Obama.

In July, the US treasury department put Mr Awlaki on its terrorism blacklist and imposed financial sanctions on him.

US officials say Mr Awlaki helped recruit Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to blow up an airliner as it flew into Detroit on 25 December 2009.

Maj Nidal Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 comrades in the Fort Hood shooting last year, sought religious advice from Mr Awlaki and saw him preach in the US state of Virginia in 2001, US officials say.

A student found guilty of attempting to murder MP Stephen Timms in east London was said to have been inspired by Mr Awlaki's online sermons.

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THE INDEPENDENT - Sunday, 7 November 2010

West panics at American-born voice of jihad

But the cleric accused of radicalising Western Muslims is just a sideshow

By Patrick Cockburn

Anwar al-Awlaki, the militant Islamic cleric in hiding in Yemen, was being denounced in the US and Britain last week as an arch-conspirator against the West, leading to hundreds of videos of his speeches and interviews being hurriedly removed from YouTube.

Awlaki, an eloquent preacher, is alleged to have radicalised Roshonara Choudhry, the theology student who stabbed Stephen Timms MP for voting for the Iraq war. Awlaki was also in contact with militant Muslims who later attacked American targets, such as the Nigerian student with explosives sewn into his underpants and the US officer who shot dead 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood.

On the videos of Awlaki still available on YouTube, often excerpts from his speeches broadcast on US TV, his message remains chillingly clear. In a soft, measured voice he describes how he was born in America, lived there for 21 years and became an Islamic preacher, advocating non-violence until the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This turned him into a supporter of holy war against America: "I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against the United States is binding for Muslims."

Awlaki has been denounced as "murderous thug" and as a leader of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, but the reason he has significant influence is that he is almost the only jihadi leader who can explain the ideology of holy war in rational and convincing words. Speeches by Osama bin Laden are at best cryptic, and those by al-Qa'ida leaders in Iraq and Pakistan are often sectarian rants.

In contrast Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and is highly educated, seldom raises his voice, and his method of speaking is similar to that of a television preacher. He speaks humbly and directly to his audience, citing recent political events and incidents from day-to-day life to illuminate his theme. In one video, illustrated by photographs of Muslims at war, he seeks to raise the morale of Muslims by describing how dark the future for Islam appeared when he was a young man. Afghanistan and South Yemen were dominated by communists, and Iraq and the Palestinian movement by nationalists. His point is that all these enemies of Islam have been unexpectedly swept away.

Most alarming for the US and British governments, Awlaki's words are directed primarily at English-speaking Muslims. He asks how American Muslims can give their loyalty to a country that is at war with Islam. Also alarming for potential targets of jihadists is that those moved to militant action by Awlaki may have had no previous contact with militant movements, so any attack comes as a surprise. Choudhry, who was jailed for life last week after stabbing Mr Timms, was the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants to Britain. She had held moderate opinions until she started browsing Islamic websites.

Awlaki is scarcely typical of the mainstream of al-Qa'ida, whose strongholds are in the tribal areas of north-west Pakistan and in Sunni Arab parts of Iraq. In sharp contrast to his sophisticated justification for holy war against the US and its allies, al-Qa'ida fighters in Iraq have largely focused on attacking the Shia majority whom they see as heretics. The Pakistan Taliban, heavily influenced by al-Qa'ida, shoot and bomb those not subscribing to their brand of Sunni Islam.

Saudi security sources say that foreign volunteers from the Muslim world, mostly from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, who imagine they are travelling to Iraq to fight US troops, end up as suicide bombers targeting Shia marketplaces and mosques. More than 100 people died in co-ordinated bomb attacks on Shia areas of Baghdad this week.

Al-Qa'ida has survived the onslaught of the US and its allies since 2003 in large part because it exists more as an ideology and set of attitudes than as an organised movement that can be disrupted or destroyed. The US policy of systematically eliminating its leaders has likewise had limited impact because the strongest elements in al-Qa'ida are local franchisees who do not give priority to holy war against the US. If they did so, attacks would be far more devastating because in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan there are many jihadi cadres skilled and experienced in making bombs and getting them to their targets.

The US government and media are now demonising Awlaki, and probably exaggerating his influence, as the inspiration for attacks by focusing on Yemen as the new bastion of al-Qa'ida. But, as in Iraq, al-Qa'ida has strength mainly because it associates itself with groups already in opposition to the central government. In Yemen there is increasing dissent in the south, formerly the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, which united with the Yemen Arab Republic in the north in 1990. The government in the capital, Sanaa, has every incentive to persuade the US to label its many domestic enemies as al-Qa'ida so it can obtain financial aid and arms, along with military and political support.

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UPDATE:

BBC - 3 November 2010

Anwar al-Awlaki advocates violent jihad against the United States

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11658920

Profile: Anwar al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, has been linked to a series of attacks and plots across the world - from 11 September 2001 to the shootings at Fort Hood in November 2009.

Since going on the run in Yemen in December 2007, Mr Awlaki's overt endorsement of violence as a religious duty in his sermons and on the internet is thought to have inspired new recruits to Islamist militancy.

US officials say he is also a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of the militant network in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and helped recruit Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to blow up an airliner as it flew into Detroit on 25 December 2009.

Following the failed attack, President Barack Obama took the extraordinary step of authorising the Central Intelligence Agency to kill him. Soon afterwards, Mr Awlaki survived an airstrike on a suspected al-Qaeda base in southern Yemen.

His family say he not a terrorist and have launched a legal challenge to stop the US executing one of its citizens without any judicial process.

9/11 Hijackers

Mr Awlaki was born in 1971 in the southern US state of New Mexico, where his father, Nasser, a future Yemeni agriculture minister and university president, was studying agricultural economics.

He lived in the US until the age of seven, when his family returned to Yemen.

After studying Islam during his teenage years, Mr Awlaki returned to the US to gain a degree in civil engineering from Colorado State University and a master's in education at San Diego State.

In 1994, he married a cousin from Yemen and took a part-time job as imam at the Denver Islamic Society.

Mr Awlaki later became imam at a mosque in Fort Collins, Colorado, before returning to San Diego in 1996, where he took charge of the city's Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque.

During his four years there, his sermons were attended by two future 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. The two men were also seen attending long meetings with the cleric.

In early 2001, he moved to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, which was attended by Mr Hazmi and a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour.

The 9/11 Commission found the connections to be suspicious, though FBI agents who interviewed him said they doubted he knew of the plot.

It also emerged that in 1998 and 1999, while serving as vice-president of an Islamic charity that the FBI described as "a front organisation to funnel money to terrorists", Mr Awlaki was visited by Ziyad Khaleel, an al-Qaeda operative, and an associate of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up landmarks in New York.

Prison

In 2002, he left the US for the UK, where he spent several months giving a series of popular lectures to Muslim youths.

Unable to support himself, Mr Awlaki returned to Yemen in early 2004, and moved to his ancestral village in the southern province of Shabwa with his wife and children.

He soon became a lecturer at al-Iman University, a Sunni religious school in Sanaa headed by Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, a cleric who has been designated a terrorist by both the US and UN for his suspected links with al-Qaeda.

In 2004, Zindani was listed as a "specially designated global terrorist" by the US Treasury Department and the UN, but Yemen took no steps to freeze his assets.

Former students include John Walker Lindh, known as the "American Taliban", and several suspected militants.

In August 2006, Mr Awlaki was detained by the Yemeni authorities, reportedly on charges relating to a plot to kidnap a US military attache.

He has said he was interviewed by FBI agents during his subsequent 18 months in prison, and believes the US asked the Yemeni authorities to prolong his detention.

Incitement

Since his release, Mr Awlaki's message has been overtly supportive of violence, railing against the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the killing of Muslims in covert operations in Pakistan and Yemen.

He has incited violence in a number of texts via his website his Facebook page and many booklets and CDs, including one called "44 Ways to Support Jihad".

Such materials have been found in the possession of several convicted English-speaking militants in Canada, the UK and US.

It also emerged after the Fort Hood incident that Mr Awlaki had given the US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people, Maj Nidal Malik Hasan, religious advice by email. He had also seen Mr Awlaki preach in Virginia in 2001.

In July 2009, the cleric posted a blog saying a Muslim soldier who fought other Muslims was a "heartless beast, bent on evil, who sells his religion for a few dollars". Following the shootings, Mr Awlaki called Maj Hasan a hero.

"My support to the operation was because the operation brother Nidal carried out was a courageous one," he told al-Jazeera.

"And I endeavoured to explain my position regarding what happened because many Islamic organisations and preachers in the West condemned the operation."

'Global terrorist'

Mr Awlaki again hit the headlines in January, when US officials said he might have met Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at al-Iman University, while the latter was studying Arabic there in November or December 2009.

The 23-year-old was at the same time receiving his final training and indoctrination from members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, ahead of his alleged suicide mission, they said.

Mr Awlaki later acknowledged that he had "communications" with the Nigerian in late 2009, but denied any role in the alleged attack.

In May, Faisal Shahzad, the US citizen of Pakistani origin who has admitted attempting to bomb New York's Times Square, said he had been inspired by the violent rhetoric of Mr Awlaki, according to US officials.

Two months later, the US treasury department named Mr Awlaki a "specially designated global terrorist", blocked his assets and made it a crime for Americans to do business with him of for his benefit.

And in late October, he was the only man named by the head of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) when he outlined major threats to the country in his first public speech.

Only days later, two suspect packages containing bombs and addressed to synagogues in the US city of Chicago were sent from Yemen. They were carried by plane and intercepted in the UK and Dubai.

US officials blamed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for the failed attack and again linked the plot to Mr Awlaki.

On 2 November, the Yemeni authorities surprised many by putting him on trial in absentia, charged with inciting violence against foreigners in connection with the killing the previous month of a French security guard at an oil company's compound.

According to prosecutors, Mr Awlaki and his cousin, Osman, were in contact with the alleged attacker, Hisham Assem. Yemeni officials had until then said they had no legal justification to detain Mr Awlaki.

He is currently thought to be hiding in the mountainous governorates of Shabwa and Marib, under the protection of the large and powerful Awalik tribe, to which he belongs.


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