Anwar al-Awlaki
Anwar al-Awlaki was an American and Yemeni imam and Islamic lecturer. He was known as a recruiter for ISIS and was very adept in social media. With a blog, a Facebook page, the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire, and many YouTube videos, al-Awlaki was described by Saudi news station Al Arabiya as the “Bin Laden of the Internet.”
As an imam of a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia (2001–02), al-Awlaki spoke with and preached to three of the 9/11 hijackers, who were al-Qaeda members. In 2001, he presided at the funeral of the mother of Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who later e-mailed him extensively in 2008–09 before the Fort Hood shootings.
In April 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the killing of al-Awlaki. He was the first US citizen on a list of people whom the Central Intelligence Agency were authorized to kill because of terrorist activities. The U.S. deployed a drone and killed al-Awlaki on September 30, 2011 in Yemen.
