’They are after my son’

Says father of Anwar al-Awlaki, the man tipped to be the next bin laden and America's biggest threat

'They are after my son'

Says father of Anwar al-Awlaki, the man tipped to be the next bin laden and America's biggest threat

With Osama bin Laden eliminated, the father of Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki fears the Americans are now after his civil engineer son, who is the spiritual leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and regarded by many as capable of filling in the shoes of the dead terrorist. Anwar al-Awlaki (40),u00a0 believed to be one of the most charismatic preachers in al Qaeda, was born in the US and is now based in Yemen.u00a0 He has been linked to US military base shootout suspect Major Nidal Hassan and failed Christmas flight bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Muttalab.

Before the raid : A still from a video released by the US shows Osama
watching TV at his Abbottabad mansion the day he was killed. Pic/AFP

"There are three drones which hover above my village 24 hours a day... it's the Americans, I'm sure of it. They've killed bin Laden and now they're after my son," Nasser al-Awlaki, the father, was quoted as saying by the Guardian. On Thursday, the US-Yemeni cleric escaped a missile strike targetting him that killed two suspected al-Qaeda fighters. According to officials, Anwar was not hit when a drone fired missile at a car in a village close to his hometown in Shabwa in restive southern Yemen. According to some officials his Yemen-based group now represents the gravest threat to the US.

'Laden of Internet'
Anwar has been referred to as the "bin Laden of the Internet" as the bearded cleric is seen as a charismatic, Internet-savvy individual with a knack of making firebrand anti-western sermons using Facebook and YouTube.
However, Anwar's father rubbished speculations that he is the next big leader of al Qaeda as "nonsense" and said his eldest son is "not a leader, he's just a man with strong views and a big mouth."

The senior al Awlaki is the former agriculture minister of Yemen. In December 2009, Yemeni forces had tried to kill Anwar in an air raid in Shabwa, but failed despite killing 34 others. Anwar al-Awlaki's firebrand anti-US sermons are believed to have radicalised many youths.

Anwar was also linked to a plot in which Nigerian student Abdulmuttalab was accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger jet on Christmas in 2009. Anwar's al-Qaeda branch is believed to be autonomous and more internationally engaged than the old core of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

OSama's courier would buy him coke
The confidential courier who unknowingly led the Americans to Osama bin Laden introduced himself to his Pakistani neighbours in Abbottabad as Arshad Khan, aka Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. His brother, known as Tariq Khan, and he had the job of buying goats, sheep and Coca-Cola for the household, media reports revealed. Sometimes the wives of the two Khans were also seen. The Khans seemed pleasant enough but they kept to themselves behind the 12-foot concrete walls and barbed wire of the house, the Times quoted neighbours as saying.

The Khan brothers, both in their 30s, had two cars, a red Suzuki van and a white Suzuki jeep. They gave varied explanations to neighbours about their source of wealth. Once they said they owned a hotel in Dubai and another time they said they were money changers. The brothers were Pashtuns from Charsadda, in Pakistan's northwest frontier.

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