This week, the FBI brought in 30 more agents to look into possible connections between international terrorists and a 24-year-old Chattanooga-raised gunman who killed five American troops here.
The New York Times and NBC News, with decades of sources in Washington, D.C., and internationally, are now reporting that the uncle who Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez visited in Jordan has been detained for questioning as investigators continue to seek the motive in last Thursday’s attack.
Unnamed officials also have told national news organizations that federal experts looking at Abdulazeez’s computer histories have found that in 2013 he had downloaded audio recordings of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-Yemeni cleric who was a recruiter for al Qaeda. Abdulazeez also had CDs of al-Awlaki’s sermons. Al-Awlaki was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The digital records from Abdulazeez’s electronic devices and phone also are yielding pages of writing that show the young man was suicidal and looking for a way to absolve what he considered were his sins.
In 2013 Abdulazeez did online research for militant Islamist “guidance” on committing violence, and ABC News reports that earlier this year, Abdulazeez had reposted a professional video about buying an AK47.
We also now know that Abdulazeez – accompanied by two other men – bought ammunition at the Hixson Walmart, and on Monday night the Mountain Creek Road apartment of a friend was searched by the FBI.