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Northern Va. Mosque of Alleged Fort Hood Shooter Connected to Jihadists and Islamic Terrorist Groups

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[Excerpt: "Hasan, who was charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder under Article 188 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in connection with last week’s fatal shootings at Fort Hood, had been in contact with the mosque’s radical former imam (spiritual leader), Anwar al-Awlaki, before the shootings, according to investigators.

Al-Awlaki, who is the author of “44 Ways to Support Jihad,” allegedly praised Hasan’s actions from a Web site he runs out of Yemen."]

CNS News
November 13, 2009
by Christopher Neefus

Dar-al-Hijrah Islamic Center, the mosque in Falls Church, Va., where accused Fort Hood attacker Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped in 2001 when he lived in the Washington, D.C., area, is perhaps best known as the same mosque that three 9/11 hijackers attended prior to flying a plane into the Pentagon.

But according to federal documents, records and terrorism investigators, the mosque also has a history of attendees and members who have had ties to al-Qaeda, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups – including some convicted of terrorism-related crimes.

Hasan, who was charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder under Article 188 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in connection with last week’s fatal shootings at Fort Hood, had been in contact with the mosque’s radical former imam (spiritual leader), Anwar al-Awlaki, before the shootings, according to investigators.

Al-Awlaki, who is the author of “44 Ways to Support Jihad,” allegedly praised Hasan’s actions from a Web site he runs out of Yemen.

According to the 9/11 Commission report, in 2001, while leader of Dar-al-Hijrah, then-Imam al-Awlaki introduced 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour to another worshipper at the mosque, Eyad al-Rababah, who helped them secure an apartment in Alexandria, Va.

Al-Hazmi and Hanjour, who started attending the mosque in May of that year, joined with a third man who also attended the mosque, a Saudi named Khalid al-Mihdhar to become three of the five hijackers onboard American Airlines Flight 77, which took off from Dulles and was flown into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

Rababah was later deported to Jordan after being convicted in “a fraudulent drivers’ license scheme,” according to a 2002 joint House-Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 9/11 report.

But apparent links between Dar-Al-Hijrah and radical Islam do not end there:

-- The telephone number of the mosque was discovered in the German apartment of one of the 9/11 co-conspirators, would-be “twentieth hijacker” Ramzi Binalshibh, both the joint committees and the 9/11 Commission reported.

In describing the connection to congressional staff, an FBI special agent said, “(T)here’s a lot of smoke there.”

-- Former mosque attendee AbdulRahman Alamoudi was convicted in 2004 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., of violating terrorism-related sections of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by raising money for al-Qaeda from Northern Virginia, according to Treasury Department documents.

Alamoudi was sentenced to 276 months (23 years) in jail for falsifying documents and concealing his financial dealings with entities in Libya, and for recruiting people for a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.

-- Another former attendee, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, is serving a 30-year federal sentence for plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush.

Abu Ali was raised in Falls Church, Va., and according to The Washington Post, taught Islamic studies to children at Dar al-Hijrah in the ‘90s, before joining a clandestine terrorist cell with ties to al-Qaeda while studying in Saudi Arabia.

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