Sunday, September 06, 2009By DAVID FERRARA and BRENDAN KIRBY
A suspected al-Qaida-linked terrorist from Alabama began to show an anti-American streak as far back as high school, one of his former teachers said Saturday. Cynthia McMeans, who taught Omar Hammami in an international studies class and a Model United Nations program, said the teenager affected a Middle Eastern accent almost overnight during his junior year at Daphne High School near Mobile. As a teenager, Hammami had turned from the Baptist beliefs of his mother to the Muslim religion his father practiced, McMeans said, and in the spring of 2001, he expressed sympathy toward hard-line Islamic regimes. "He was just starting on that path when he was in the 11th grade," McMeans said. "It wasn't the religion part of it that was scary, it was supporting Osama bin Laden and al- Qaida and the Taliban and the Sharia law." Citing a confidential source, Fox News reported Friday that a federal grand jury has issued a secret indictment against Hammami on a charge of providing material support for terrorists. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Mobile have declined to comment on Hammami, who has appeared in several Internet videos from war-torn Somalia using the battlefield name Abu Mansour al-Amriki. His father, Shafik Hammami, declined to talk about the allegations facing his son but expressed anger at the publicity his family has received. "I am furious about what you wrote," he told the Press-Register on Saturday. "What gives you the right to put my name in the paper? To say where I work? What have I done?" Omar Hammami was raised in the Plantation Hills subdivision in Daphne, and McMeans said the teen had a Southern accent when he first started her class. As the lessons progressed, he became more dedicated to Islam, praying daily at the school, McMeans said, and he revealed radical political views. One day, Hammami attacked another student who teased him for speaking Arabic in class, according to McMeans and the classmate, Mike Faulk.
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