Crime

Report: Officials investigating anti-US rant on Facebook believed to be linked to Ohio State attacker

Artan Facebook rant
Artan – Screengrab: ABC News

On Monday, ABC News reported that authorities are looking into an anti-U.S. rant made on Facebook just three minutes before the car/knife attack began.  According to the report, the post is believed to be connected to Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Somali refugee who was shot dead after he rammed pedestrians with his car and attacked others with a knife.

According to ABC:

Appearing three minutes before the beginning of the rampage that left 11 people injured, the post reads: “I can’t take it anymore. America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that.”

The post also invokes the name Anwar Al-Awlaki, a radical American-born al-Qaeda cleric, describing him as a “hero.” Al-Awlaki was killed in 2011 but his propaganda has been linked to several domestic terrorist attacks in the years after his death.

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“If you want us Muslims to stop carrying lone wolf attacks, then make peace,” the post reads. “We will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims.”

The post, which was on a page that appears to have since been disabled, takes the form of a photo of a computer screen displaying a text document.

A screenshot of the alleged post can be seen below, courtesy of Weasel Zippers:

Anti-US rant

ABC said authorities identified Artan as the attacker, but said they were uncertain of his motive.

ABC added:

Officials said that this morning’s attack began when the assailant drove a vehicle into several people before exiting and slashing victims with a knife.

The attack comes as the ISIS terror group has been urging its followers in recent weeks to copy the vehicle attack that took place in Nice, France, when 84 people were killed by a terrorist driving a semi-truck through a Bastille Day celebration. And it comes two days after the terror group published a video instructing its followers on how to use a knife to attack non-believers. ISIS is not mentioned in the Facebook post.

Three months ago, ABC said, Artan told the local college paper, The Lantern, that he was scared to pray as a Muslim.

“I wanted to pray in the open, but I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be,” he told the paper. “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads, so they’re just going to have it, and it — it’s going to make them feel uncomfortable.”

Here’s a video report, courtesy of ABC News:

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Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad
Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad – Source: Author (used with permission)

Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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