Warrant Withdrawn in 2002 for Terror Cleric

http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_13897548

 

Warrant withdrawn in 2002 for radical cleric who praised Fort Hood suspect

By Karen E. Crummy
The Denver Post

Posted: 12/01/2009 01:00:00 AM MST

 

Anwar al-Awlaki has preached on the Net and applauded suicide bombers.

An arrest warrant for a radical Islamic cleric who has become an important figure in the Fort Hood shooting investigation was withdrawn in 2002 by the Colorado U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver — possibly preventing his prosecution years before one of his followers killed 13.

An arrest warrant was issued for Anwar al-Awlaki in 2002 on charges from Denver's federal court of making a false statement and passport fraud, court documents show. Those charges were withdrawn before al-Awlaki, who was living in Yemen, was served the arrest warrant.

When al-Awlaki passed through JFK airport in New York City in October 2002, he was briefly detained. But after authorities there saw that the federal warrant from Colorado had been withdrawn, they released him, according to ABC News.

After that, Awlaki eventually returned to Yemen, where he has advocated for jihad against the West and is now considered by law enforcement to be an inspiration for al-Qaeda. One of his followers, according to federal authorities, was Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 at Fort Hood, Texas. Numerous e-mail exchanges between Hasan and al-Awlaki were found on Hasan's computer, authorities have said, and al-Awlaki, now in Yemen, has praised Hasan's actions.

The Colorado U.S. Attorney's Office is in the process of pulling the seven-year-old case they once built against al-Awlaki out of the archive warehouse and expects to get it today, said spokesman Jeff Dorschner. Specific details of the case were not immediately clear, he said, since the office handles about 500 cases a year and often prosecutes passport-fraud crimes. The prosecutor of the al-Awlaki case, Joe Mackey, was out of the office for an emergency.

Al-Awlaki has been known in federal law-enforcement circles for years. He spent part of his childhood in Yemen and graduated from Colorado State University in 1991. Afterward, he became a mosque leader, according to The Washington Post. He also served as vice president of a Yemeni charity that was later described by federal prosecutors as a "front organization" to support al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

After 9/11, authorities learned that three of the hijackers visited al-Awlaki's California and Virginia mosques, but the FBI did not have enough evidence to arrest or detain him. In early 2002, he left the U.S. and started preaching on the Internet and applauding Palestinian suicide bombers.

It was while he was away that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver sought the arrest warrant. ABC News said it was based on the fact that al-Awlaki had attended CSU on a foreign-student visa, claiming he was born in Yemen, not in New Mexico, where he was actually born.

Soon after he was briefly detained at JFK, he returned to Europe, and then Yemen. He was arrested there in 2006 with a group of suspected al-Qaeda militants but was released a year later.

Last year, al-Awlaki on his website encouraged Muslims across the world to kill U.S. troops in Iraq, and he has often advocated for jihad against the West.

Hasan contacted al-Awlaki about a year ago, and the two exchanged between 10 and 20 e-mails.

In an interview published in The Washington Post, al-Awlaki said he did not pressure Hasan to carry out the shooting.