DUBAI: Radical Yemeni cleric Anwar Al-Awlaqi urged all Muslims serving in the US army to follow the example of Major Nidal Hassan who stands accused of killing 13 of his comrades, in a video posted on Sunday.
"What Nidal Hassan did was heroic … and I call on all Muslims serving in the US army to follow his path," he said in a video posted by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on jihadist websites, the US monitoring group SITE reported.
"Nidal Hassan is one of my students and I am honored by that," he said in the video, whose authenticity could not immediately be verified.
Major Nidal Hasan, a US army psychiatrist, is accused of having opened fire on colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people in November.
In a "wonderful" action, "he killed American soldiers on their way to Afghanistan and Iraq," said Awlaqi, adding that Hasan, who is of Palestinian origin, was "defending his nation."
Awlaqi also defended Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student accused of a failed attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger plane with explosives last Christmas.
The operation "was very successful even though it did not even kill anyone," he said.
"Those who were to be killed in the plane are nothing compared to … a million women and children in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan," whom he accused the US military of having killed.
"We must treat them the same way and attack them just like they’ve attacked us," Awlaqi said.
The US-born cleric also tried to justify the targeting of American civilians with the argument that they had "participated in the war because they have elected this (American) government."
US President Barack Obama’s administration, for its part, has decided to authorize the targeted killing of Awlaqi, an American citizen of Yemeni descent.
Yemen’s defense ministry said in April that the authorities were tracking Awlaqi for his alleged links to Al-Qaeda and "terrorist activities."
However, Awlaqi insisted he was safe in Yemen. "It’s not true that I’m being targeted … I am moving around between members of my tribe and in other parts of Yemen," he said, adding that "the Yemeni people hate Americans."
