The Jihadist Next Door

ON A WARM, cloudy day in the fall of 1999, the town of Daphne, Ala., stirred to life. The high-school band came pounding down Main Street, past the post office and the library and Christ the King Church. Trumpeters in gold-tasseled coats tipped their horns to the sky, heralding the arrival of teenage demigods. The star quarterback and his teammates came first in the parade, followed by the homecoming queen and her court. Behind them, on a float bearing leaders of the student government, a giddy mop-haired kid tossed candy to the crowd.

Omar Hammami had every right to flash his magnetic smile. He had just been elected president of his sophomore class. He was dating a luminous blonde, one of the most sought-after girls in school. He was a star in the gifted-student program, with visions of becoming a surgeon. For a 15-year-old, he had remarkable charisma.

“It felt cool just to be with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.” A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise in the most unimaginable way. Some 8,500 miles from Alabama, on the eastern edge of Africa, he has become a key figure in one of the world’s most ruthless Islamist insurgencies. That guerrilla army, known as the Shabab, is fighting to overthrow the fragile American-backed Somali government. The rebels are known for beheading political enemies, chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery. With help from Al Qaeda, they have managed to turn Somalia into an ever more popular destination for jihadis from around the world.

Full article can be read here.

The Jihadist next door.

At least he is fighting his Jihad over in some dust bowl of a country and not here.

I think I read in the full article that he sometimes goes on American forums.

Surely he has visited ATS.

Omar, if you read this.

I hope you have a short life.

[edit on 29-1-2010 by calcoastseeker]

Reminds me of a saying I saw on real story TV from a ex-NYC taxi driver from Pakistan who came back to Pakistan because he couldn't be a doctor in the States like he used to be in Pakistan:

'I would rather be a king in Hell than be a slave in Heaven'

Probably working for the CIA. Line 2.

Upon reading the first two paragraphs, I thought "oh good, a feel-good, the world is not all bad story".

But it has a sad ending, at least from my perspective. I wonder if his hatred for America was slowly brewing while he was here, or if he was so charmed by OBL and his ilk that he finds bloodshed irresistable?

Assuming he was born in the states, and consequently an American, could he not be extradicted back here, and tried for treason?

So yet another adam pearlman. And the site they used to recruit fighters was hosted by an American company too. Yet ordinary americans cant google the word bomb without having the fbi kick their door in. Hmmm.