President-elect Donald Trump has said Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who went on a rampage at Ohio State University campus on November 28 “should not have been in our country”.
Donald Trump added that “ISIS is taking credit for the terrible stabbing attack”, which left 11 people injured.
Earlier, a ISIS-affiliated news agency claimed business student Abdul Razak Ali Artan as a “soldier”.
The 18-year-old’s mother says he acted normally on the day of the rampage at Ohio State University in Columbus.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on November 30 that investigators had found “no direct link” between Abdul Razak Ali Artan and any terrorist organization.
FBI special agent in charge Angela Byers said separately that hemay have been inspired by al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a 2011 US drone strike in Yemen.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan was a refugee who moved with his family in 2014 to the US from Pakistan, where he had been living since 2007.
Image source The Lantern
According to US officials, no negative information was found during background checks on Abdul Razak Ali Artan when he was allowed into the US and when he became a legal permanent resident in 2015.
Police say Artan drove his car at a group of people on the campus as students were returning from the Thanksgiving weekend.
After his vehicle jumped the kerb, the student then began attacking them with a “butcher’s knife” before being shot dead by a campus police officer.
Donald Trump has vowed as president to institute an “extreme vetting” program to limit immigration to the US from countries that are believed to be at a heightened risk of terrorism.
He had previously called for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslim immigration to the US.
Hassan Omar, president of the Somali Community Association in Columbus, Ohio, spoke to Abdul Razak Ali Artan’s mother, who said he had driven his siblings to school as usual on the day of the attack.
“He woke up and he went to school,” Hassan Omar said, relaying the conversation that he had with Artan’s mother on November 28.
She told him that she did not know anything was wrong until police arrived at her house.
Minutes before the rampage, Abdul Razak Ali Artan posted to Facebook about “lone wolf attacks”.
He said that “we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims. You will not celebrate or enjoy any holiday”.
Artan’s post also complained about treatment of Muslims around the world.
He warned that some Muslims were in sleeper cells, “waiting for a signal. I am warning you Oh America!”
However, a friend said the attacker “actually loved America”.
Ameer Kadar, who last saw Abdul Razak Ali Artan two weeks ago, told NBC News: “He loved the fact of the opportunity he had here to go to school.
“He loved the fact that he was able to get a college degree.”
Abdul Razak Ali Artan grew up in Somalia, but moved to Pakistan in 2007.
ISIS claims it was behind the Ohio State University car and knife rampage that left 11 people injured.
The November 27 attack at OSU was carried out by one of its students, Somali-born Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the authorities said.
The ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency called the 18-year-old business undergraduate a “soldier”.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan drove his car at a group of people, then attacked them with a knife before being shot dead.
Amaq posted an image of Abdul Razak Ali Artan wearing a blue shirt and sitting with greenery in the background, but did not say if the attack was directed from abroad, or if Artan had been self-radicalized.
Most of the victims were injured by the attacke’s car, but two were stabbed with a “butcher’s knife” and another suffered a fractured skull, officials said.
One of the wounded victims, William Clark, an OSU professor, described how Abdul Razak Ali Artan’s vehicle had crashed into a large concrete planter before bouncing off and striking him.
Image source The Lantern
“It clipped the back of my right leg and basically flipped me up in the air and I landed on the concrete,” he told a news conference.
William Clark said Abdul Razak Ali Artan then got out of the car and began attacking students before he was shot down.
Surveillance photos showed the attacker in the car by himself just before the attack, but investigators are looking into whether anyone else was involved.
Dozens of FBI agents have searched Abdul Razak Ali Artan’s apartment for clues as to what may have triggered the attacks.
Neighbors described him as polite and said he attended daily prayers at a local mosque.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who was born in Somalia and was a US permanent resident, arrived in the country in 2014 as the child of a refugee.
He had been living in Pakistan from 2007 to 2014.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan recently posted on Facebook about the US treatment of Muslims, according to the AP, citing a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“If you want us Muslims to stop carrying lone wolf attacks, then make peace” with the Islamic State group, he allegedly wrote.
Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the act was indicative of someone who may have been self-radicalized.
ISIS militants have found recruits in the US Somali community in recent years.
About a dozen young men and women from Minnesota’s Somali community have traveled to Syria to join militant groups.
Nine men in Minnesota were sentenced on terror charges for plotting to join ISIS.
And a Somali-American man attacked 10 people with a knife at a central Minnesota mall before he was killed by an off-duty police officer in September.
Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of Council of American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota chapter, said some Somali-Americans were concerned about being viewed as “guilty by association”.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the man who injured 11 people, one critically, in a rampage on November 28 at Ohio State University, was of Somali descent, officials say.
The 18-year-old rammed his car into a group of pedestrians on campus then got out and began stabbing people before police shot him dead.
Police Chief Kim Jacobs said they were investigating whether it was a terrorist attack.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan was a student at the 60,000-student campus in Columbus.
The Somali-born was living in the US as a legal permanent resident, unnamed officials told AP.
Image source The Lantern
Law enforcement officials quoted by NBC News said Abdul Razak Ali Artan had left Somalia with his family in 2007, and lived in Pakistan before resettling two years ago in the US.
Asked at a news conference whether it could have been a terrorist act, Police Chief Kim Jacobs said: “I think we have to consider that it is.”
She added: “Obviously with the purposeful intent that was noticed – driving on the sidewalk – we’re going look at it from the potential that it was planned.”
The FBI has joined the police investigation.
The Ohio State incident began at 10:00 local time on Monday when a vehicle jumped the kerb at the campus, striking pedestrians near Watts Hall, the science and engineering building.
Ohio State Police Chief Craig Stone said the driver got out of the vehicle and began stabbing bystanders with a “butcher’s knife”.
A police officer, who was nearby because of a gas leak, shot the driver dead in less than a minute.
Authorities identified the officer as 28-year-old Alan Horujko, who has been with Ohio State University police since 2015.
The injured included a mix of academic faculty, maintenance staff, and graduate and undergraduate students.
Campus police say that CCTV cameras filmed the suspect arriving on campus alone, indicating that he did not have an accomplice aiding him during the attack.
The college had warned students in a tweet to “Run Hide Fight”, warning there was an “active shooter”, though authorities later said the attacker did not use a firearm.
Hours later, police declared the scene “secure”, lifting the shelter-in-place order and canceling classes for the remainder of the day.
Columbus Police sent a SWAT team, dog units, negotiators and a helicopter to the scene.
Federal officials from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also responded.
Public school districts near to Ohio State placed their students on lockdown during November 28 alert.
The Ohio State attack came just as students were resuming classes following the Thanksgiving week-end, and after the university’s American football team defeated rival Michigan in a match that drew over 100,000 people to the Columbus campus on November 26.
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