Fort Hood suspect attended Virginia mosque linked to 9-11 hijackers

By BARRY SHLACHTER

barry@star-telegram.com

Update: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is awake and speaking with hospital staff, according to a spokesman for Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

CNN and the Austin American-Statesman are quoting hospital spokesman Dewey Mitchell as saying Hasan's ventilator was removed over the weekend.

It isn't clear whether he is yet speaking to investigators.

The suspect in the Fort Hood shootings once regularly attended a mosque in Falls Church, Va., that the FBI has linked to two of the 9-11 hijackers, but the congregation’s spiritual leader said Sunday that the government’s claims of connections are wrong.

In 2001, the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center was led by Anwar Al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born scholar now living in Yemen. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, according to new disclosures by a Fort Hood acquaintance, was an admirer of Al-Awlaki, who has been described as a radical Islamist.

The 9-11 Commission report accepted FBI findings that two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour, briefly worshipped at the mosque after one met Al-Awlaki during the imam’s religious posting in San Diego. But the FBI found no evidence that Al-Awlaki had prior knowledge of the attack, The Washington Post reported.

Shaker Elsayed, the mosque’s current imam, said the FBI turned over to the commission the fact that two of the hijackers used the mosque as their home address on driver’s license applications. Elsayed ridiculed that as a specious link, saying that even FBI agents he met could not provide credible proof of a connection with the congregation.

Moreover, no congregant remembers seeing either al-Hamzi or Hanjour at Dar, one of the capital area’s oldest and largest mosques, the imam told the Star-Telegram.

No luck finding a wife

Elsayed said he spent time with Hasan but that was after being asked to assist the bachelor psychiatrist find a wife.

"I met him personally because he sought my help to get him married. This was unsuccessful," said the imam, who said he learned little of the man’s worldview.

Like most worshippers, he said, Hasan "joined prayers, finished prayers, then left. I didn’t see him hanging out with people, joining discussion groups or classes. But there has been a lot of blogging about our mosque, a right-wing conspiracy, trying to make a mountain out of cardboard."

Contrary to many reports that Hasan was a brooding loner in Killeen, a more detailed picture has surfaced: He had at least one close friend, an Army officer who had converted to Islam several years ago. They had worshipped through the night together during the final days of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting holiday.

Kamran Pasha, a Pakistani-American novelist, quoted the Fort Hood officer as saying he befriended the Army psychiatrist, prayed with him hours before Thursday’s mass killings and had once challenged Hasan’s view that Islam condoned suicide bombings.

Hasan also said Jews were "cursed by God," according to the officer, who had contacted Pasha long before the shootings to discuss his novel, Mother of the Believers, an account of Islam’s beginnings as seen through the eyes of the Prophet Muhammad’s wife Aisha. The officer, a 22-year Army veteran, declined to be identified or speak to reporters because of his past work in special operations in Iraq, Pasha said. No independent corroboration could be made Sunday.

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