Ahmad Khan Rahami Latest Radicalized American Influenced by Al-Awlaki

(New York, NY) – The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) today released a new resource detailing the extensive role that U.S. born cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki has played in radicalizing, recruiting, and inciting to violence U.S. and European extremists, before and after his death in September 2011.

Anwar al-Awlaki’s Ties to Extremists includes profiles of dozens of individuals in the U.S. and Europe allegedly influenced by al-Awlaki, the former director of external operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Awlaki was the first U.S. citizen targeted by a U.S. drone strike (September 30, 2011) due to his role in taking the “lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans,” according to President Barack Obama. Awlaki also published detailed bomb-making instructions in AQAP’s online magazine, Inspire.

Al-Awlaki’s pervasive and continuing radicalizing influence online was detailed by CEP CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace in a January 2016 USA Today editorial.  

U.S. extremists influenced by al-Awlaki include:

• Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest gun attack on U.S. soil;
• Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California in 2015;
• Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009; 
• Mohammad Abdulazeez, who killed four Marines and a Navy sailor in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2015;
• Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who killed three people and injured 250 others in 2013; 
• Ahmad Khan Rahami, suspected of planting bombs in New York and New Jersey that injured 29 people on September 17 and 18, 2016; and
• Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, foiled in his attempt to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear on an airplane from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.

European extremists influenced by al-Awlaki include:

• Cherif Kouachi and Said Kouachi, participants in the November 2015 Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo;
• Michael Adebolajo, who is serving a life sentence for killing British soldier Lee Rigby in 2013;
• Richard Reid, who attempted to destroy a passenger airliner flying from Paris to Miami in 2001 using a shoe bomb; and
• Anjem Choudary, a U.K. cleric sentenced to prison in 2016 for promoting support for ISIS.