Hunt for radical with ties to Hasan

SAN'A, Yemen - Yemeni authorities are searching for Anwar al-Awlaki, the extremist U.S.-born prayer leader who communicated with the Fort Hood shooting suspect and called him a hero.

Awlaki, an imam who has used his personal Web site to encourage Muslims around the world to kill U.S. troops in Iraq, disappeared eight months ago, his father said yesterday. Yemeni security officials said they believed he was hiding in a region of the mountainous nation that is a refuge for Islamist extremists.

He was arrested in 2006 on suspicion of giving religious approval to extremists to conduct kidnappings, but investigators were unable to prove any links to al-Qaeda, and he was released in late 2007, according to two Yemeni counterterrorism officials and an Interior Ministry official.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the news media.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, accused of killing 13 people in a rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, exchanged e-mail with Awlaki 10 to 20 times over several months last year, according to a U.S investigative official in Washington.

The communications, intercepted by the FBI, consisted primarily of Hasan posing questions to the imam as a spiritual adviser, and their content was "consistent with the subject matter of [Hasan's] research," a law enforcement official said.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

Investigators say there is no evidence Hasan received help or orders to carry out the Fort Hood attack. The man to whom Hasan turned for advice has for years preached in sermons circulated on the Web that the United States is engaged in a war against Islam and urged Muslims to fight it.

In January, Awlaki posted an article titled "44 ways to support jihad," saying helping "holy warriors" fight the United States was "obligatory for every Muslim."

Awlaki, 38, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, once preached at a Virginia mosque that Hasan's family attended.

He has had several encounters with al-Qaeda figures. In 2000, he met two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, at a San Diego mosque where Awlaki was a preacher.

The FBI probed Awlaki in 1999 and 2000 after learning he might have been contacted by a possible "procurement agent" for Osama bin Laden.

After he returned to Yemen in 2002, he taught at San'a's Iman University, the same school John Walker Lindh, the American caught with the Taliban in Afghanistan, used to visit while living in Yemen.

Awlaki was arrested in 2006 along with five others accused of kidnapping a Shiite for ransom, according to the Yemeni officials.

Investigators could not find any evidence for al-Qaeda ties. Tribal leaders - who hold enormous influence in Yemen - pushed for the group's release, the Interior Ministry official said, and the six were freed in December 2007.

Officials' suspicions over Awlaki were aroused again months later when he stopped checking in with security officials as required under his release agreement. He was put on a wanted list.

On Monday, he declared on his Web site that Hasan "is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

By yesterday, the Web site, hosted by Media Temple Inc. of Culver City, Calif., was off-line. It was unclear who took it down. Media Temple did not immediately respond to phone calls or e-mail.

Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, said his son's wife and five children were staying with him. He was studying agriculture in the United States when Anwar was born and later served as Yemen's agriculture minister. Anwar, he said, is a devout Muslim but "has nothing to do with al-Qaeda."