December 23, 2009
AFP

Nidal Hasan, the US soldier who killed 13 people at an attack on Fort Hood military base last month, sought advice about murdering US troops in 2008, a Yemeni imam told Al-Jazeera on Wednesday.

Photo: Nidal Hasan, pictured in 2000, the US soldier who killed 13 people at an attack on Fort Hood military base last month, sought advice about murdering US troops in 2008, a Yemeni imam told Al-Jazeera on Wednesday. (AFP)

Hasan, a Muslim Army psychiatrist, faces 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in connection with the November 5 shooting attack at the Texas military facility.

On Wednesday, Al-Jazeera's Arabic-language website published an interview with US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, who said he and Hasan communicated by email for over a year about the permissibility of killing US soldiers and Israeli civilians.

"The first message I received from Nidal was on 17 December 2008," Aulaqi told the interviewer, adding that Hasan initiated the email communication.

"He asked about killing American soldiers and officers and whether that was legitimate or not," Aulaqi said.

Links between the Muslim cleric and Hasan are already being investigated, but the interview reveals for the first time how long the two men knew each other and communicated, and also offers insight into how early Hasan was thinking about the possibility of attacking fellow servicemembers.

Aulaqi, a US-born preacher, said he met Hasan nine years earlier at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Washington, DC and the pair begin communicating after Aulaqi left the United States for Yemen.

"The first message was on the rules about a Muslim soldier who serves in the American army and kills his fellow (soldiers)," Aulaqi said.

"And in a group of his messages, Nidal explained his view on the killing of Israeli civilians, which he supported," he added.

Aulaqi denied having suggested the attack on Fort Hood, but said he supported Hasan's actions, adding that Hasan was motivated by long-standing grievances against the US military.

"The target that Nidal targeted was a military target inside the United States and not anything else," Aulaqi said.

"I didn't recruit Nidal Hasan and in fact America recruited him with its crimes and injustices and that is something that America does not want to recognize."

Hasan, who is paralyzed from the chest down after being shot by a police officer during the attack, is being held at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio pending trial.

The Pentagon has launched an investigation into the shootings to determine whether warning signs were missed and to prevent such an assault from happening again.

Twelve soldiers and one civilian were killed in the attack. Another 42 people were wounded.