Imam: Mosque not linked to hijackers

FORT WORTH, Texas — The suspect in the Fort Hood shootings once regularly attended a Falls Church, Va., mosque, which the FBI has linked to two of the 9/11 hijackers, but the congregation's spiritual leader Sunday insisted the government's claims of connections are wrong.

The family of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 and wounded 29 at the Texas military base, held his mother's funeral at the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., in 2001, according to her obituary in The Roanoke Times newspaper.

In 2001, the mosque was led by Anwar Aulaqi, a New Mexico-born scholar now living in Yemen. Hasan, according to new disclosures by a Fort Hood acquaintance, was an admirer of Aulaqi, who has been described as a radical Islamist.

The 9/11 Commission report accepted FBI findings that two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour, briefly worshipped at the mosque after one had met Aulaqi during the imam's previous religious posting in San Diego. But the FBI found no evidence Aulaqi had prior knowledge of the attack, The Washington Post reported.

Shaker el Sayed, Dar's current imam, said the FBI turned over to the commission the fact that two of the hijackers used the mosque as their home address on driver's license applications, which el Sayed ridiculed as a specious link, noting even FBI agents he met could not provide credible proof of a connection with the center.

Moreover, no congregant remembers seeing either al-Hamzi or Hanjour at Dar, one of the capital area's oldest and largest mosques, the imam told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

El Sayid said he spent time with Hasan after being asked to help find the bachelor psychiatrist a wife.

"I met him personally because he sought my help to get him married. This was unsuccessful," said the imam, who learned little of Hasan's views.

Like most worshippers, he said Hasan "joined prayers, finished prayers, then left. I didn't see him hanging out with people, joining discussion groups or classes. But there has been a lot of blogging about our mosque, a right-wing conspiracy, trying to make a mountain out of cardboard."

Contrary to numerous reports Hasan was a brooding loner in Killeen, Texas, a more detailed picture of Hasan has surfaced that said he had at least one close friend, an Army officer who had converted to Islam.

Kamran Pasha, a Pakistani-American novelist, quoted the Fort Hood officer as saying he befriended the Army psychiatrist, prayed side by side with him hours before Thursday's mass killings and had once challenged Hasan's view that Islam condoned suicide bombings.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Sunday the country shouldn't get caught up in speculation about Hasan's Muslim faith.