Anwar al-Awlaki

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Anwar al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and died in Yemen under the missiles of an American drone. On the 30th of September 2011, a group of men was traveling toward Ma'rib Governorate. They stopped for breakfast in Al Jawf Governorate. A witness who was with them said the men spotted the drone overhead and tried to flee in their vehicle. Hellfire missiles were fired anyway.

  Al-Awlaki was an Islamic cleric and lecturer. He was the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a drone strike of his own government. That fact alone raises a hard set of questions. How does an American-raised preacher end up on a CIA kill list? Which accusations against him rest on his own words, and which rest on the claims of others? And why did recordings of his voice keep finding new listeners long after he was gone?

  1534367

• 2. From Las Cruces to Washington

  ›

  In 1971, Nasser al-Awlaki, a Fulbright Scholar from Yemen, finished a master's degree in agricultural economics at New Mexico State University. That same year his son Anwar was born. The father went on to earn a doctorate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and he worked at the University of Minnesota from 1975 to 1977. Back in Yemen he served as Agriculture Minister under Ali Abdullah Saleh. He also became President of Sana'a University. A relative, Ali Mohammed Mujur, was Yemen's prime minister from 2007 to 2011.

  The family returned to Yemen in 1978, when Anwar was seven years old. He lived there for 11 years and studied at Azal Modern School. Around 1990 he went back to the United States for college. At Colorado State University he led the Muslim Student Association, and in 1994 he graduated with a B.S. in civil engineering.

  In 1993, while still a student in Colorado, al-Awlaki traveled to Afghanistan. The Soviet occupation was over, and he spent some time training with mujahideen who had fought against it. Friends from Colorado State said the poverty and hunger there depressed him and deeply affected him. They insisted he “wouldn't have gone with al-Qaeda.” Mullah Mohammed Omar did not form the Taliban until 1994. Back on campus, al-Awlaki showed a growing interest in religion and politics.

  In 1994 he married a cousin from Yemen and began serving part-time as imam of the Denver Islamic Society. In 1996 an elder chastised him for urging a Saudi student to fight against the Russians in Chechnya. He left Denver soon afterward for San Diego. There he was imam of the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque from 1996 to 2000, with a following of 200-300 people. Outside the pulpit he volunteered with youth organizations, went fishing, and swapped travel stories with friends. He also built a popular and lucrative series of recorded lectures. At San Diego State University he studied Education Leadership and earned a master's degree. In 1998 and 1999 he served as vice-president of the Charitable Society for Social Welfare. He later told reporters he left the San Diego mosque “after an uneventful four years” and took a sabbatical, traveling overseas.

  “He was the magic bullet,” said Johari Abdul-Malik, a spokesman for the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. “He had everything all in a box.” Al-Awlaki had been accepted into a doctoral program at George Washington University. In 2000 the mosque recruited him as its imam. One board member who hired him said he was convinced the new imam had no leanings toward terrorism. Described as alluring and charming, al-Awlaki drew young people and connected with the sophisticated Muslim community of Northern Virginia. His command of English brought in followers who did not speak Arabic. He also served as Muslim chaplain at George Washington, where he worked on a doctorate in Human Resource Development by 2001.

  In these years he passed as a moderate. He publicly condemned the September 11 attacks and al-Qaeda. He was invited to speak at the United States Department of Defense. He became the first imam to lead a prayer service for the Congressional Muslim Staffer Association at the U.S. Capitol. Gordon M. Snow, the FBI's Director of Counter-Intelligence for the Middle East, often attended his academic discussions. Soon after 9/11, reporters sought him out to explain Islam and its rituals, and National Geographic and The New York Times interviewed him.

  NPR reported in 2010 that in 2001 he seemed a moderate who could “bridge the gap between the United States and the worldwide community of Muslims.” The Times wrote at the time that he was “held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West.” Fox News and the New York Daily News reported in 2010 that a Pentagon employee invited him to a luncheon at the Secretary's Office of General Counsel. The secretary of the Army had suggested inviting a moderate Muslim to give a talk.

  The mosque's outreach director later said al-Awlaki resigned in early 2002 because post-9/11 media attention was distracting him from his duties.

  2224294060

• 3. Questions After September

  ›

  Six days after the 9/11 attacks, al-Awlaki wrote on the website IslamOnline.net that Israeli intelligence agents might have been responsible. He added that the FBI “went into the roster of the airplanes, and whoever has a Muslim or Arab name became the hijacker by default.”

  The bureau had its own reasons to look closely at him. Investigators found that two alleged hijackers had attended his San Diego mosque during his tenure. They also found that alleged hijackers, a third among them, had attended Dar al-Hijrah. U.S. officials later alleged that Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, heard his sermons and met him personally in San Diego. Al-Awlaki told authorities their conversations were trivial. The 9/11 Commission Report said the hijackers “reportedly respected al-Awlaki as a religious figure.” Police who raided the Hamburg apartment of Ramzi bin al-Shibh found al-Awlaki's telephone number among his contacts.

  The FBI interviewed him four times in the eight days after the attacks. Agents then held repeated interviews and put him under surveillance. Some officials spoke openly of their suspicions about his role in the plot. Yet no solid evidence emerged linking him to it. An earlier FBI inquiry, running from June 1999 to March 2000, had examined possible links to Hamas. It also looked at Ziyad Khaleel, a Bin Laden contact, and a visit by an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman. It found too little for a prosecution. In 2004 the FBI described the charity he had served as a “front organization to funnel money to terrorists.”

  In January 2013, Fox News reported on FBI records that Judicial Watch had obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Judicial Watch said they showed the FBI knew al-Awlaki bought tickets for three of the hijackers to fly into Florida and Las Vegas. The FBI cautioned against drawing conclusions from redacted documents. It said the document did not link him to any purchase of tickets, and that no body had found evidence tying him to the attacks. A separate account holds that a conversation with one hijacker led to round-the-clock surveillance. By that account, FBI questioning of prostitutes and escort service operators tipped him off in 2002.

  That summer brought new problems. By July 2002 he was under investigation for taking money from the subject of a Joint Terrorism Task Force inquiry, and his name joined the list of terrorism suspects. Later in 2002 he posted an Arabic essay on the Islam Today website called “Why Muslims Love Death.” It praised the fervor of Palestinian suicide bombers, and he voiced a similar view in a speech at a London mosque.

  In June 2002, a federal judge in Denver signed an arrest warrant for passport fraud. The case turned on a 1990 application for a Social Security number, where al-Awlaki had listed Yemen as his birthplace. He used that paperwork to get a passport in 1993, and he later corrected the record to say he was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico. On the 9th of October, the Denver U.S. Attorney's Office moved to dismiss the complaint and vacate the warrant. U.S. Attorney Dave Gaouette said prosecutors believed they lacked evidence of a crime. He remarked on the oddity: “The bizarre thing is if you put Yemen down (on the application), it would be harder to get a Social Security number than to say you are a native-born citizen of Las Cruces.”

  When al-Awlaki returned from a trip abroad in October 2002, prosecutors could not charge him over the Social Security statement. The 10-year statute of limitations had expired. A 2012 Fox News investigation reported that the warrant was still in effect on the morning of the 10th of October. That morning FBI Agent Wade Ammerman ordered his release. Congressman Frank Wolf and several congressional committees urged FBI Director Robert Mueller to explain why. A magistrate judge approved rescinding the warrant on the 10th of October, and it was filed the next day.

  ABC News reported in 2009 that the San Diego Joint Terrorism Task Force disagreed with the cancellation. Its agents were watching him and wanted to “look at him under a microscope.” Gaouette answered that nobody had objected at a meeting that included Ray Fournier, the diplomatic security agent whose allegation had started the warrant effort. A conviction at the time, he said, would have meant about six months in custody. The New York Times later suggested that al-Awlaki claimed Yemeni birth to qualify for scholarship money reserved for foreign citizens. In May 2010, Wolf wrote that he had fraudulently gained more than $20,000 this way.

  While living in Northern Virginia, al-Awlaki also visited Ali al-Timimi. Al-Timimi was convicted in 2005 for leading the Virginia Jihad Network and is serving a life sentence. Al-Awlaki left the United States before the end of 2002. Johari Abdul-Malik blamed a “climate of fear and intimidation.”

  4344677137

• 4. A Voice Without Credentials

  ›

  “He was the main man who translated the jihad into English,” said a student who attended al-Awlaki's lectures in 2003. In the United Kingdom, al-Awlaki spent several months giving talks that drew as many as 200 people. He told young Muslim followers: “The important lesson to learn here is never, ever trust the kuffar disbeliever. Do not trust them! Their leaders are plotting to kill this religion. They're plotting night and day.”

  In December 2002 and January 2003 he gave a lecture series at the London Masjid al-Tawhid mosque. It described the rewards that martyrs receive in paradise. He toured England and Scotland with the Muslim Association of Britain and lectured at ExpoIslamia, an event run by Islamic Forum Europe. At the East London Mosque he said: “You don't hand over a Muslim to the enemies.” In 2003, Louise Ellman, MP for Liverpool Riverside, raised the Muslim Association of Britain in Parliament. She described it as a Muslim Brotherhood front founded by Kemal el-Helbawy.

  His religious training was thin. It consisted of intermittent months with various scholars, reading and reflecting on their works. He held no religious qualifications. Olivier Roy, a scholar of political Islam, said he could not understand the popularity. Fluent English let al-Awlaki reach a huge audience beyond Arabic speakers, but he lacked formal Islamic study.

  In a Yemeni prison, al-Awlaki read 150 to 200 pages a day of the works of Sayyid Qutb. He said he became “so immersed with the author I would feel Sayyid was with me in my cell speaking to me directly.” The New York Times calls Qutb an originator of the contemporary “anti-Western Jihadist movement.” Al-Awlaki saw the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia as two successful examples of modern Islamic governance, “even though far from perfect.”

  Terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann called him in 2009 “one of the principal jihadi luminaries for would-be homegrown terrorists.” Kohlmann said his lecture “Constants on the Path of Jihad” was the “virtual bible for lone-wolf Muslim extremists.” Philip Mudd, formerly of the CIA's National Counterterrorism Center, called him “a magnetic character... a powerful orator.” Documents recovered from bin Laden's hideout show the al-Qaeda leader was unsure about al-Awlaki's qualifications. Political scientist Seth Jones credits his lasting relevance to his English and his charisma. He describes “a disarming aura and unnerving confidence, with an easy smile and a soothing, eloquent voice.”

  His best-known text was the essay “44 Ways to Support Jihad,” from January 2009. In it he wrote: “The hatred of kuffar is a central element of our military creed.” He argued that every Muslim must take part in jihad, either directly or by backing others. He also wrote that Muslims must stay physically fit. U.S. officials consider it a key text for al-Qaeda members. He wrote for Jihad Recollections, an English-language online publication, and published a short book in 2009 called Allah is Preparing Us for Victory.

  Much of his catalogue was devotional teaching. Al Basheer Productions issued his Lives of the Prophets on 16 CDs. It issued a Life of Muhammad in two sets, one of 16 CDs and one of 18. It also issued 15 CDs on Abu Bakr as-Siddiq and 18 on Umar ibn al-Khattab.

  His website and blog carried sharper material. In February 2009 he wrote: “We will implement the rule of Allah on Earth by the tip of the sword, whether the masses like it or not.” In a video posted on the 8th of November 2010, he called on Muslims to kill Americans “without hesitation.” In October 2008, Under-Secretary of Homeland Security Charles Allen warned that al-Awlaki targeted U.S. Muslims with radical online lectures. Al-Awlaki answered on his site in December 2008, challenging Allen to find “just one such lecture where I encourage ‘terrorist attacks’.” He also ran a Facebook fan page, with fans in the US, many of them high school students. In 2009 the UK government found 1,910 of his videos on YouTube. One had been viewed 164,420 times.

  After 2006, Britain barred him from entering the country. He spoke instead by video link, from 2007 to 2009, on at least seven occasions at five British locations. These included an Islamic student society at the University of Westminster in September 2008 and the Al Huda Mosque in Bradford. A Cageprisoners dinner at the Wandsworth Civic Centre in South London also carried one. On the 1st of January 2009, a conference at the East London Mosque showed his videotaped lecture. Former Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve voiced concern. On the 23rd of August 2009, local authorities in Kensington and Chelsea banned a video-link talk at Kensington Town Hall. Until February 2010, hundreds of audio tapes of his sermons sat in the Tower Hamlets public libraries. In 2009 the Islam Channel carried advertisements for his DVDs.

  His recorded lectures were heard in at least six terror cells in the UK through 2009.

  27467696100

• 5. Students and Followers

  ›

  Nidal Hasan, an Army Medical Corps psychiatrist, first crossed paths with al-Awlaki in 2002, when al-Awlaki presided at the funeral of Hasan's mother. Between December 2008 and June 2009, intelligence agencies intercepted at least 18 e-mails between the two men. Hasan wrote in one: “I can't wait to join you in the afterlife.” Military analyst Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer said it “sounds like code words.” An FBI-led task force in Washington reviewed the messages. Army employees saw only questions about spiritual guidance, and judged there was not enough for a larger investigation.

  In November 2009 the Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Hider Shaea interviewed al-Awlaki. He acknowledged the correspondence. He said he “neither ordered nor pressured... Hasan to harm Americans.” Hasan's first e-mail, on the 17th of December 2008, began: “Do you remember me? I used to pray with you at the Virginia mosque.” Al-Awlaki said he “blessed the act” because it targeted soldiers preparing for Iraq and Afghanistan. His website called Hasan a hero. In January 2010 The Wall Street Journal noted that al-Awlaki had never been charged with a crime in the US.

  On the 25th of December 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253. The Sunday Times established that the two men first met in Yemen in 2005, while Abdulmutallab studied Arabic. Some accounts proved shaky. The Sunday Telegraph removed a report about a talk at the East London Mosque after the mosque complained. A spokesperson for the Finsbury Park Mosque denied al-Awlaki had ever spoken there. Other evidence was firmer. Voice-to-voice communication between the two was intercepted in the fall of 2009. Yemeni investigators believed Abdulmutallab traveled to Shabwa in October 2009. There, they said, he met al-Qaeda members in a house al-Awlaki had built.

  In January 2010, al-Awlaki said: “Umar Farouk is one of my students; I had communications with him. And I support what he did.” He added: “I did not tell him to do this operation, but I support it.” In June 2010, Michael Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said al-Awlaki had a “direct operational role” in the plot.

  The list of people who consumed his recordings was long. FBI agents said his name came up in a dozen terror plots in the US, UK, and Canada. These included the 2005 London bombings, the 2006 Toronto case, the 2007 Fort Dix plot, and the 2009 Little Rock recruiting office shooting. Michael Finton, who tried in September 2009 to bomb a federal building in Springfield, Illinois, quoted him on Myspace. Mohamed Alessa and Carlos Almonte, two New Jersey men, tried to reach Somalia in June 2010 to join Al Shabaab. Zachary Chesser said he exchanged e-mails with al-Awlaki. In July 2010, Paul Rockwood was sentenced to eight years for listing 15 potential targets. He had studied al-Awlaki's “44 Ways to Jihad.”

  Faisal Shahzad, convicted over the 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt, called himself a “fan and follower.” Roshonara Choudhry, who stabbed former British minister Stephen Timms in May 2010, said she was radicalized by his online sermons.

  In 2010, cartoonist Molly Norris at Seattle Weekly stopped publishing after Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. At the FBI's suggestion she changed her name and went into hiding. The June 2010 issue of Inspire, an English-language al-Qaeda magazine, carried a fatwā from al-Awlaki cursing her and eight others. “The medicine prescribed by the Messenger of Allah is the execution of those involved,” he wrote. Daniel Pipes noted that al-Awlaki stood at a crossroads of death declarations, targeting Norris while the U.S. government targeted him.

  Officials also linked him to the PETN bombs sent in cargo planes from Yemen to Chicago in October 2010. U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein said al-Awlaki “was behind the two bombs.”

  7486989985

• 6. Shelter in Shabwa

  ›

  Early in 2004, al-Awlaki moved to Shabwah Governorate in Yemen with his wife and five children. He lectured at Iman University, headed by Abdul Majeed al-Zindani. Al-Zindani appears on the UN 1267 Committee's list of people tied to al-Qaeda, though he denied influencing al-Awlaki or being his “direct teacher.” Some believe the school's curriculum is radical. John Walker Lindh and other alumni have been associated with militant groups.

  On the 31st of August 2006, al-Awlaki was arrested with four others. The charges were kidnapping a Shiite teenager for ransom and joining an al-Qaeda plot to kidnap a U.S. military attaché. Around September 2007, two FBI agents interviewed him about the 9/11 attacks and other subjects. John Negroponte, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, told Yemeni officials he did not object to the detention. Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen listed him among 100 prisoners whose release they wanted. After 18 months, he was freed on the 12th of December 2007 when his tribe intervened. A Yemeni security official said he had repented. He moved to the family home in Saeed, a hamlet in the Shabwa mountains.

  Moazzam Begg's Cageprisoners, which represents former Guantanamo detainees, campaigned for his release. Al-Awlaki told Begg that before prison he had condemned the 9/11 attacks.

  The tribe's motto is: “We are the sparks of Hell; whoever interferes with us will be burned.” Tribal code obliges the Awlakis to protect those who seek refuge, and the duty is stronger for a tribesman or his friend. Al-Awlaki gave al-Qaeda members in Yemen this protection against the government. He reportedly helped negotiate deals with leaders of other tribes. In December 2008 he sent a message to the Somali group al-Shabaab congratulating them.

  His father said he went into hiding around March 2009. By December 2009 he was on the Yemeni government's most-wanted list. He was believed to be in Shabwa or Mareb, part of the so-called “triangle of evil.” On the 24th of December 2009, Yemeni jets struck a meeting of senior al-Qaeda leaders at a hideout in Rafd, in eastern Shabwa. Pravda reported at least 30 al-Qaeda members killed and an al-Awlaki house raided and demolished. On the 28th of December, The Washington Post reported that U.S. and Yemeni officials believed he had been at the meeting. The same day, the journalist Abdul Elah al-Shaya said al-Awlaki phoned him to say he was well and had not attended.

  In March 2010, a tape was released in which he urged Muslims living in the United States to attack their country of residence.

  Nasser al-Awlaki rejected the claims. He told CNN's Paula Newton: “He's not Osama bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not.” On a Yemeni official's claim that his son had taken refuge with al-Qaeda, he said: “our tribe is protecting him right now.” In January 2010, the governor of Shabwa said al-Awlaki was traveling with al-Qaeda members, including Fahd al-Quso, who was wanted in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole.

  5187798293

• 7. Targeting a Citizen

  ›

  In January 2010, White House lawyers debated whether it was legal to kill al-Awlaki, given his U.S. citizenship. Officials said international law permits targeted killing of an “imminent threat.” Because he was a citizen, the National Security Council had to approve. Such action against a citizen is extremely rare. As a military enemy, he was not covered by Executive Order 11905, which bans assassination for political reasons. The authorization was still controversial. By the 4th of February 2010, the New York Daily News reported he was on a targeting list signed off by the Obama administration. On the 6th of April, The New York Times reported that Obama had authorized the killing.

  The al-Awlaki tribe warned it would “not remain with arms crossed if a hair of Anwar al-Awlaki is touched.” Yemen's foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, said Yemen had received no evidence from the US. He said al-Awlaki had always been seen as a preacher rather than a terrorist. In an April video, al-Awlaki asked: “What am I accused of? Of calling for the truth? Of calling for jihad for the sake of Allah?”

  In late April, Representative Charlie Dent introduced a resolution urging the State Department to withdraw his U.S. citizenship. On the 16th of July, the Treasury Department added him to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Under Secretary Stuart Levey called him “extraordinarily dangerous.” A few days later the UN Security Council put him on its Resolution 1267 list as a leader, recruiter, and trainer for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Canadian banks were ordered to seize his assets. In September 2010, Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, called him the West's Public Enemy No 1. That month, Kevin Yorke of the New York Police Department's Counterterrorism Division called him “the most dangerous man in the world.”

  In October 2010, Congressman Anthony Weiner urged YouTube to remove his videos. Pauline Neville-Jones, the British security minister, said such sites “incite cold-blooded murder.” YouTube began removing the material in November 2010.

  On the 2nd of November, prosecutors in Sana'a charged him in absentia with plotting to kill foreigners and belonging to al-Qaeda. The announcement came during the trial of Hisham Assem, accused of killing Jacques Spagnolo, an oil industry worker. Al-Awlaki's lawyer denied any connection to the death. On the 6th of November, Judge Mohsen Alwan ordered that al-Awlaki be caught “dead or alive.”

  In July 2010, his father contacted the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union. Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU argued that the government has no “blank check to kill terrorism suspects wherever they are in the world.” Lawyers for designated terrorists need a Treasury license, and the lawyers received theirs on the 4th of August. On the 30th of August, they sued President Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. They sought an injunction and disclosure of the standards for targeting citizens. Judge John D. Bates dismissed the suit in an 83-page ruling. He found that the father lacked legal standing and that the claims fell under the political question doctrine.

  On the 5th of May 2011, a missile fired from a drone at a car in Yemen failed to kill al-Awlaki. A Yemeni security official said two al-Qaeda operatives in the car died.

  1415161719

• 8. After the Strike

  ›

  Samir Khan, an American born in Saudi Arabia, died in the same strike. He was thought to be behind al-Qaeda's English-language web magazine Inspire. U.S. sources said Joint Special Operations Command carried it out under CIA direction. Yemen's Defense Ministry announced the death. President Obama called it “a major blow to Al-Qaeda's most active operational affiliate.” He said the strike proved that al-Qaeda and its affiliates “will find no safe haven anywhere in the world.”

  Journalist Glenn Greenwald argued on Salon.com that the killing violated al-Awlaki's First Amendment rights. He said it also violated the Due Process Clause, citing the 1969 Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio. He noted doubts among Yemeni experts about al-Awlaki's role in al-Qaeda.

  In a letter dated the 22nd of May 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder told Senator Patrick Leahy that senior officials had judged al-Awlaki a continuing and imminent threat. They had also found capture was not feasible. The operation, Holder wrote, followed the law-of-war principles of necessity, distinction, proportionality and humanity. His verdict: “The decision to target Anwar al-Aulaqi was lawful, it was considered, and it was just.”

  On the 21st of April 2014, the Second Circuit ordered the administration to release documents justifying its drone killings. In June 2014, the Justice Department disclosed a 2010 memorandum by David J. Barron, then acting head of its Office of Legal Counsel. Barron judged al-Awlaki a significant threat with an infeasible chance of capture. He wrote that “the Constitution would not require the government to provide further process.” The New York Times Editorial Board called the reasoning “a slapdash pastiche of legal theories.” An ACLU lawyer called the memo “disturbing.”

  Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Anwar's son, was born in Denver on the 26th of August 1995 and was an American citizen. On the 14th of October 2011 he was killed in Yemen at the age of 16, in a drone strike. Nine others died, including a 17-year-old cousin. Relatives said he had left the family home in Sana'a to search for his father in Shabwa, though his father was hundreds of miles away. He was sitting in an open-air cafe when he died. U.S. officials called the strike a mistake. They said the intended target was an Egyptian, Ibrahim al-Banna, who was not there. Abdulrahman was not known to have any independent link to terrorism.

  Nasser al-Awlaki told Time magazine that the killings were a crime. He called President Obama “a child killer.” In 2012 he filed the lawsuit Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta, challenging the drone killings of his son and grandson. Judge Rosemary M. Collyer dismissed it in April 2014. On the 29th of January 2017, Anwar's 8-year-old daughter Nawar, also an American citizen, was killed in a DEVGRU operation authorized by President Donald Trump.

  The recordings outlived the man. Journalist Scott Shane estimates hundreds of thousands of viewers. Nasser says five million tapes were sold in the West. Al-Awlaki's work has been tied to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the 2015 San Bernardino attack, and the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. The New York Times wrote in 2015 that his statements had inspired more terrorism after his death than before. The Counter Extremism Project counts 88 extremists influenced by him, 54 in the U.S. and 34 in Europe. It argues that social media, particularly YouTube, must permanently remove all his videos.

  192052518