Sana`a: A top al Qaeda leader in the Arabian peninsula region Tuesday said he trained the US major who killed 13 people at a military base as well as the Nigerian bomber who attempted to blow up a US-bound plane last year.
Anwar al-Awlaqi claimed to have trained UK-educated Nigerian Islamist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who attempted to blow up a jet bound for Detroit Dec 25, 2009.
He also said he was "proud" to have trained radical Islamist Nidal Hassan, a US-born doctor of Palestinian descent who shot dead 13 people and wounded 30 others at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in November last year.
"I am proud to have been their teacher," al-Awlaqi, who has dual Yemeni-US citizenship and was an imam of mosques in San Diego and Virginia, said in a video aired by Al-Jazeera channel.
IANS
