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Al Qaeda now portrays Nidal Hasan as terrorism star

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Whether someone other than Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had a guiding hand in an attack that killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas last year remains an open question, as military proceedings against Hasan get under way in Texas.

But Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups say no matter: They are hailing Hasan, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, as a hero worthy of emulation. Though the Nov. 5 shooting was not on the scale of a 9/11-style attack, it served the same purpose: to terrify “the Crusader West” and shake America off kilter, according to an Al Qaeda spokesman.

“Hasan has become almost everything they’ve been hoping … he’s legendary now within their movement,” says Jarret Brachman, an expert on international terrorist groups and author of “Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice.”

Hasan’s ties to US-born Muslim cleric and terrorist recruiter Anwar Al-Awlaki have given rise to the theory that Hasan carried out the first international terrorist attack against America since 9/11.

In the months after the shooting, Al Qaeda doubted that line of reasoning, because a minor online essay about martyrdom was all that could be linked to Hasan. More recently, however, the international jihadist group has sought to portray Hasan as a terrorist “trailblazer” who conducted a “historic and trend-setting” operation, though some say Al Qaeda’s embrace of the Fort Hood incident indicates that it is now willing to settle for inflicting damage that, while deadly, is much less spectacular than a 9/11-style attack.

Full story: Fort Hood shooting: Al Qaeda now portrays Nidal Hasan as terrorism star – CSMonitor.com

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