Radical Muslim cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, the victim of assassination by US forces 30 September, was born in New Mexico in 1971, educated at Colorado State University in engineering, and radicalised while preaching in US mosques and visiting Afghanistan in the 1990s. His sermons attracted a large following, first in Denver and then San Diego, where he completed a Masters in education.
Though in the FBI’s sites from 1999, he became a media star after 9/11, interviewed by National Geographic and the New York Times as a moderate, articulate American Muslim. He condemned the attacks, stating ”There is no way that the people who did this could be Muslim, and if they claim to be Muslim, then they have perverted their religion.” On IslamOnline.net six days after the 9/11 attacks, he suggested that Israeli intelligence agents might have been responsible, and that the FBI “went into the roster of the airplanes, and whoever has a Muslim or Arab name became the hijacker by default”.