Hasan

Texas, Nov. 7: The US Army major who killed 13 people in a shooting spree at America’s biggest military base had come to the attention of the FBI six months earlier over possible links to extremist comments posted on the Internet.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a devout Muslim who was trying to buy his way out of the army, was suspected of being the author of postings which compared suicide bombers to heroic soldiers who throw themselves onto grenades to save others.

It also emerged that Hasan, 39, had described the US Army as “the aggressor” in Iraq and Afghanistan and was resisting a planned deployment to Afghanistan, raising questions over whether the military missed warning signs which might have prevented the massacre.

Witnesses said Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire — a phrase commonly used by Islamic militant suicide bombers — though investigators said there was no evidence he had been recruited by al Qaida or other Islamic extremist organisations.

Hasan — who was initially thought to have been killed — is being kept alive on a ventilator after being shot four times.

Six months ago the FBI was alerted to postings by a blogger called Nidal Hasan on the Scribd website.

The author wrote about a US soldier who had died smothering a grenade blast, saying: “Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.

“If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory.”

Law enforcement sources said that before the shooting no formal investigation had been launched into the postings and Hasan had not been confirmed as the author, but his apartment in Killeen, Texas, has now been searched and his computer seized.

The gunman, a psychiatrist at the Darnall Army Medical Center on the base, was said by his family to be “mortified” at the prospect of being sent to Afghanistan, which they said would have been his “worst nightmare”.

A neighbour who lived in the same apartment block as Hasan said he had told her he was due to leave for Afghanistan yesterday, just 24 hours after the shooting.