This post: "CNN has released clips of an audio messa…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

At the highest levels of the US military, a quiet discussion is going on about putting in place a legal framework that would permit the US government to strip American citizenship from terrorists.

The case of Las Cruces, New Mexico born al Qaeda commander Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been a key organizer and recruiter for the terrorist organization in Yemen is the primary driver of this exploration of possibly modifying US law to allow “de-citizening.”

As the Washington Post’s Dana Priest recently revealed, al-Alaqi was added recently to a short list of other Americans for whom there are kill orders in place.

A senior Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has told me that to his knowledge, there has been no serious discussion in the Committee of stripping US citizenship from terrorists, but a senior Pentagon official has confirmed that some in the military are exploring the upsides and downsides of such a more routenized mechanism for stripping citizenship.

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The suspect in a failed Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt told federal investigators that radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attack, CBS News has learned.
….

The source said Abdulmutallab told investigators he was guided by al-Awalki to detonate the bomb over U.S. soil, unlike the failed British bomber plot in 2006 when the bombers were instructed to detonate bombs on airliners over the ocean on the way to the U.S. so that there would be no evidence left behind.

There’s also a discussion of the legality of the US government targeting al Awlaki:

CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports that al-Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship – he was born in New Mexico – will have little bearing on American military and intelligence efforts to locate and kill him.

U.S. officials, both current and former, tell Logan that if an individual is deemed to be part of a terrorist network that is a threat to American security in any way, they can be targeted legitimately.

Al Awlaki denied in another report giving Abdulmutallab permission or issuing a fatwa approving the attack.

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In an interview which the website said a Yemeni freelance journalist had held with Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born preacher said he had been a teacher of the Nigerian suspect in the Dec 25 attempted bombing of the US-bound plane.

“The mujahid brother, Umar Farouk (Abdulmutallab) … is one of my students. Yes, and there was contact between us. But I did not issue a fatwa (religious edict) to Umar Farouk for this operation,” Awlaki was quoted as saying.

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The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a U.S. passenger plane on Christmas met in a remote mountainous area of Yemen with regional al-Qaida leaders, possibly including a radical American cleric who was also in contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Yemen’s deputy prime minister said Thursday.

However, Rashad al-Alimi insisted that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was recruited by al-Qaida in Britain, before he arrived in Yemen last summer, and that he obtained the explosives used in the failed attack after he left Yemen.

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The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner had his suicide mission personally blessed in Yemen by Anwar al-Awlaki, the same Muslim imam suspected of radicalizing the Fort Hood shooting suspect, a U.S. intelligence source has told The Washington Times.

The intelligence official, who is familiar with the FBI’s interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said the bombing suspect has boasted of his jihad training during interrogation by the FBI and has said it included final exhortations by Mr. al-Awlaki.

“It was Awlaki who indoctrinated him,” the official said. “He was told, ‘You are going to be the tip of the spear of the Muslim nation.’”

In his FBI interrogation, according to the U.S. intelligence official, Mr. Abdulmutallab spoke of being in a room in Yemen receiving Muslim blessings and prayers from Mr. al-Awlaki, along with a number of other men “all covered up in white martyrs’ garments,” and known only by code names and “abu” honorifics.

The official said such clothing and the lack of familiarity among the men suggests al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula intends to use the men in that room in suicide missions.

The intelligence official’s description comes in the wake of several reports that Yemen is breeding scores of jihadists ready to strike the West.

Yemen’s top diplomat said Tuesday that hundreds of al Qaeda militants are in his country and pleaded for foreign help and intelligence in rooting them out.

They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit. There are maybe hundreds of them — 200, 300, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi told the Times of London.

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Intelligence officials said he was there to provide the religious justification for attacks against Yemeni and US targets in response to Dec. 17 airstrikes against al Qaeda in Abyan and Sana’a.

One TI post about Awlaki that has gotten a lot of hits is ‘The Salafi refutation of Anwar al-Awlaki,‘ where, from memory, he is denounced by a prominent Saudi Arabian shaykh as a licenser of vigilantes and hirabah, which seems to be topical to Awlaki’s purpose at the meeting.

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ABC is also now reporting that the attacker wasn’t a ‘lone wolf’ and that the attack was definitely planned by Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen.

According to the authorities, Abdulmutallab says he made contact via the internet with a radical imam in Yemen who then connected him with al Qaeda leaders in a village north of the country’s capital, Sanaa.

Authorities say they do not yet know if the imam was the same one who was in contact with Maj. Nidal Hasan prior to his alleged attack on soldiers at Fort Hood last month. American-born Anwar Awlaki has lived in Yemen since 2002 and is considered a major recruiter for al Qaeda by U.S. authorities. He survived a U.S.-backed air strike earlier this week.

Also, as with the case of the five Americans recently arrested in Pakistan, Abdulmutallab came to the attention of US authorities six months ago when worried family members contacted the US embasssy and reported that he might have become radicalized.

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