Naval base attacker’s terror ties
THE Saudi military student who killed three Americans at a US naval base in December had long-standing ties to AlQaeda and planned an attack before he arrived in the United States, US justice officials said yesterday.
The December 6 attack by Mohammed Alshamrani, a Royal Saudi Air Force flight student at the Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, “was actually the culmination of years of planning and preparation”, said FBI director Christopher Wray.
Evidence discovered on an encrypted cell phone shows he was radicalised at least as far back as 2015, and had been associating with operatives from the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Mr Wray added.
The FBI and Justice Department revealed their findings after a months-long effort to crack the encryption on Alshamrani’s iPhone, which they said Apple refused to help with.
US Attorney-General Bill Barr accused Apple of putting its own financial interests ahead of the nation’s.
Apple rejected suggestions it did not co-operate in the investigation. It also said creating a so-called “back door” into its phones for US law enforcement would make them vulnerable for hackers.
Mr Wray said the 21-yearold Saudi had expressed a desire to learn to fly years ago with plans for a “special operation”, enlisting in the Royal Saudi Air Force and joining flight training in the US.
“In the months before the attack, while he was here among us, he talked with AQAP about his plans – taking advantage of the information he acquired here, to assess how many people he could try to kill,” Mr Wray said.
The December 6 shooting in a classroom building at the naval base left three US sailors dead and wounded eight other people before Alshamrani was killed by police.