Jihadist Born in Alabama and Radicalized in U.S. Is Reportedly Killed in Somalia
Omar Hammami, the intellectually gifted, popular, church-going teen from small town Daphne, Ala., who turned into a rap song-writing and performing al Qaeda propagandist, was reportedly killed in an ambush on Thursday in southern Somalia.
The ambush, according to the Associated Press, was ordered by the leader of Hammami’s terrorist organization - the Somalia-based al-Shabaab, a barbaric group whose members in 2008 stoned to death a 13-year-old rape victim in a stadium filled with spectators.
Hammami, 29, who adopted the name Abu Mansoor al-Amriki - meaning “the American” - had reportedly been on the run from his fellow jihadists for several months after a falling-out with al-Shabaab’s leadership. He had accused al-Shabaab’s leaders of living extravagant lifestyles on the taxes collected by the group’s fighters from Somalis, according to the AP. He was also on the run from U.S. He was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list with a $5 million reward for his capture.
“To have an American citizen that has risen to this kind of rank in a terrorist organization - we have not seen that before,” a senior U.S. law enforcement official told The New York Times in 2010.
The Intelligence Report wrote about Hammami and his transformation from Alabama high school kid to ruthless terrorist in 2011 as part of a cover story on homegrown jihadists 10 years after the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
With Hammami’s reported death on Thursday, three of the 10 homegrown jihadists profiled by the Report have been killed. Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, and Samir Khan, who grew up in Charlotte, N.C., were killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011.
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