Saturday, March 23, 2013
A US extremist fighting with Islamist militants in Somalia on Friday
brushed off a $5 million bounty offered by the State Department,
jokingly asking how much he could get for his left leg.Alabama-born
Omar Hamami -- better known as Al-Amriki or "the American" -- is in
Somalia, where he has fought with the Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents.
On Wednesday the US State Department's Rewards for Justice program offered the sizable reward for his arrest.
"As
I'm a bit low on cash, how much is my left leg going for? I figure,
Shamil Basayev did the one-leg jihad thing," he wrote on Twitter,
referring to a dead Islamist commander of a Chechen rebel movement, who
lost a leg in fighting the Russian army.
Hamami, 28, moved to
Somalia in 2006 and began to work for Shebab recruiting young trainees
through his English-language rap songs and videos, the State Department
said in a statement.
He has since split from the main wing of the Shebab, who now want to kill him.
Hamami
was indicted in 2009 by an Alabama district court for providing support
to a terrorist organisation, and two years later he was placed on a US
Treasury blacklist freezing all his assets in the United States.
The
State Department also offered a $5 million bounty for Jehad Mostafa, a
former resident of California, who left for Somalia in 2005 where he
provided media support and lead foreign fighters.