Army massacre fiend Nidal Malik Hasan attended a Virginia mosque at the same time as two of the 9/11 hijackers — and the FBI is now investigating whether there is a connection between the men, an official confirmed yesterday.
Maj. Hasan — the Army psychiatrist accused of fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 29 others at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday — had held his mother’s funeral at the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., in May 2001.
The mosque’s imam at the time was the ultraradical Anwar Aulaqi, thought to have ties to Osama bin Laden.
After 9/11, the controversial imam admitted to the FBI that he had met with Nawaf al-Hazmi, one of the hijackers who crashed a jet into the Pentagon.
Al-Hazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, had attended the imam’s mosque in early April 2001 — the same time Hasan’s family worshipped there.
The Falls Church mosque is one of the largest on the East Coast, and thousands attend prayers and services there.
The mosque’s outreach director, Imam Abdul-Malik, said it’s a mistake for people to tie regular attendance at a mosque to extremism.
Many Muslims pray at the mosque several times a day, he said. “It’s part of family life. It’s like going out for ice cream after dinner,” he added.
The possible association among Hasan, the hijackers and the radical imam only fueled fears that the Fort Hood murders were more than just the work of one disturbed person.
Hasan was scheduled to be deployed soon to Afghanistan, and that might have fueled his deadly rage, officials said.
But clearly, the massacre might have been an act of terrorism, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said yesterday.
“I want to say very quickly we don’t know enough to say now, but there are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act,” Lieberman told “Fox News Sunday.”
Either way, the Army should have booted the deeply disturbed Hasan the moment he showed any signs of Islamic extremism, said Lieberman, who heads the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Hasan’s classmates at the Uniformed Services University, the military college where he recently took master’s courses, said they repeatedly griped to higher-ups about his constant anti-American rants.
One said he warned superiors that the raging Hasan was a “ticking time bomb” after he made a presentation defending Islamic suicide bombers.
Another classmate said he complained to five officers and two civilian faculty members.
He wrote in a document sent to Pentagon officials that fear in the military of being seen as politically incorrect prevented an “intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology” in the ranks.
Lieberman said, “If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the US Army has to have zero tolerance. He should have been gone.”
The senator vowed to launch an investigation into whether the Fort Hood bloodshed was terror-related and if the Army missed vital warning signs that could have prevented it.
A government official, who asked not to be identified, said an initial review of Hasan’s computer use has found no evidence of links to terror groups or anyone who might have helped plan or push him toward the attack.
President Obama will visit the base tomorrow for a memorial service.
Hasan, who was shot four times, remains in critical condition, but was removed from a ventilator Saturday. With AP