Terrorists have beheaded Alabama native-turned terrorist Omar Hammami, Somali media report. He recently said he feared for his life.
He also was known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki or simply “the American,” and rose to the position of a senior commander in the Al Shabaab terrorist group, linked with Al Qaeda. Al Shabaab has not confirmed the report of Hammami’s execution.
He posted a YouTube video earlier this year, in which he said he was a marked man, hunted by his fellow terrorists, apparently for disagreeing with them about the terrorist group’s future and its views of Muslim Sharia law.
Hammami stated, “I record this message today because I feel that my life may be endangered by Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahideen due to some differences that occurred between us regarding matters of the Sharia law and matters of strategy.”
Posting a video expressing fear of fellow terrorists is unprecedented and could even have hastened his death at the hands of Al Shabaab terrorists, who reportedly beheaded him on April 5.
A Somali website reported that Hammami was the only top official absent from a recent meeting. The execution may have caused a split in the feared Al Shabaab group, with several members having fled to a mountainous area.
Hammami was born in Alabama to a Native American mother and a Syrian-born father. He was the president of his American college’s chapter of the Muslim Students Association, whose websites were monitored by police, He dropped out of college in 2002, traveled with a friend to Somalia and then joined the terrorist group. He previously mocked the United States after false reports that a drone attack had killed him.