He's already the target of assassination by CIA operatives in Yemen, which civil liberty groups have condemned but anti-terror groups have applauded, but if radical cleric and former San Diegan Anwar al-Awlaki isn't killed by CIA but is captured alive, President Obama announced this week that the U.S. is considering filing criminal charges against him.
Since 9/11, I've been covering Awlaki, who went to San Diego State University and was an imam at the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami Mosque in La Mesa in the 1990s. Before and after 9/11, the Feds have had their share of opportunities to capture him, or at least detain him for questioning.
Even though he always cast himself while in San Diego as a moderate who condemned 9/11, Awlaki had been under scrutiny for years prior to the terrorist attack in 2001 by San Diego FBI agents for his relationships with known terrorists. And he was the personal adviser to Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Mihdhar, the two 9/11 hijackers that lived here.
A U.S. and Yemeni dual citizen born in New Mexico, Awlaki has finally gotten the attention of the President because he has become indisputably more influential and powerful in the radical Islamic world than even Osama bin Laden.
