OSU Terrorist, Abdul Artan, Posted Anti-American Rant Minutes Before the Attack
Terrorist Abdul Artan was killed by a hero police officer. (Kevin Stankiewicz / The Lantern)
OSU Terrorist, Abdul Artan, Posted Anti-American Rant Minutes Before the Attack
Columbus, OH – Nine people were injured, one critically, at Ohio State University, on Monday in a planned, coordinated attack. The campus atmosphere is still tense and uncertain today although classes have resumed. News sources confirm that yesterday’s attacker, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, was shot and killed after being confronted by Hero OSU Officer Alan Horujko. We are now learning more about the would-be killer’s motives.
Artan was a Somali refugee who was a legal permanent resident of the United States. He was also a logistics student in the business school at Ohio State University, having recently transferred from Columbus State Community College (Ohio). According to news sources, Abdul Artan was admitted to the United States in 2014 with his parents after having lived in Pakistan since 2007. He lived briefly in a shelter in Dallas, Texas, after coming to the United States, before moving to Ohio. He was not an American citizen.
In May, 2016, Artan graduated from Columbus State Community College, where he studied Arts and Sciences. He continued taking additional non-credit classes at CSCC through the summer of 2016. Artan had no known prior disciplinary issues with either college prior to yesterday’s attack.
The Ohio State University newspaper, The Lantern, published a feature article in its August 25, 2016 edition, titled “Humans of Ohio State”. In this article, Abdul Artan was interviewed and “bemoaned the lack of pray facilities at” Ohio State University. He said “I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be. If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think.” Artan stressed in the article that he needed to pray five times a day.
In that same article, Abdul Artan was complimentary of the pray facilities at Columbus State Community College. According To CSCC, a meditation room was created in 2013 “in an effort to support the holistic wellness of students and employees.” The space was designed for meditation, reflection and/or prayer, with the purpose being “to provide an accommodation for individual spiritual needs.” The meditation room was not designed for one specific religion but for students to be able “to explore a time and place of peace and refuge while learning and working,” according to CSCC’s web site.
According to news sources, Investigators are carefully checking Artan’s Facebook page, specifically at a declaration that was posted three minutes before the attack at Ohio State University. This declaration by Abdul Artan stated “if you want us Muslims to stop carrying lone wolf attacks, then make peace. We will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims.” A different post by Artan on his Facebook page said that “I am sick and tired of seeing [Muslims] killed & tortured EVERYWHERE. 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.” This weak bedwetter is now justifiably dead.
Artan’s Facebook post also mentions American-born terrorist recruiter Anwar-al-Awlaki and referred to the recruiter in another Facebook post as a hero. Anwar-al-Awlaki was a radical, well-known cleric of the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen before being killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011. His propaganda has been linked to several domestic terrorist attacks in the years since his death.
Abdul Artan’s Facebook page has since been disabled.
During yesterday’s attack, there were conflicting reports that Abdul Razan Ali Artan began yelling something as he got out of his vehicle after plowing into a group of pedestrians, before he began stabbing them. But one witness said that Artan was completely silent during the attack and after he was shot. This witness described Artan as “very creepy.”
According to news sources, ISIS has been urging its followers to reproduce the vehicle attack that took place in Nice, France, when 84 people were killed by a terrorist driving a semi-truck through a crowd of people. Two days ago, ISIS published a video instructing its followers on how to use a knife to attack non-believers. ISIS is not specifically mentioned in Artan’s Facebook posts.
According to Richard Clarke, a former U.S. National Coordinator for Security and Counter-terrorism, “so many people, who are flipped by ISIS propaganda remotely, look like they are leading successful lives. It’s so hard to predict when the propaganda will get through to them to the point where they crack and go violent.”
Do you think that any different refugee screening could have prevented this attack? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments below.
