Anwar al-Awlaki
American-Yemeni imam and suspected Islamist extremist (1971–2011)
Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki (April 21, 1971 – September 30, 2011) was an American-Yemeni Islamic cleric, lecturer, and propagandist. He was assassinated in Yemen in 2011 by a U.S. drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki was the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and assassinated by a U.S. government drone strike. Al-Awlaki, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen, was a key organizer for the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda.
Al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, U.S., in 1971 to parents from Yemen. Growing up partly in the United States and partly in Yemen, he attended various U.S. universities in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also worked as an imam despite having no religious qualifications and almost no religious education. Al-Awlaki returned to Yemen in early 2004 and became a university lecturer after a brief stint as a public speaker in the United Kingdom. He was detained by Yemeni authorities in 2006 and spent 18 months in prison for allegedly kidnapping a Shiite teenager for ransom, and allegedly participating in an al-Qaeda plot to kidnap a U.S. military attaché, before being released without facing trial.
Following his release from Yemeni custody, Al-Awlaki had significantly radicalized, and began to speak overtly in support of violence, also condemning the U.S. government's foreign policy towards Muslims.
“Anwar al-Awlaki” enters the record as american-Yemeni imam and suspected Islamist extremist (1971–2011). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Anwar, al-Awlaki and American-Yemeni can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q200964. VIAF identifies the subject as 55988807. The Library of Congress control number is n2003072734. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2011, 2004 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anwar al-Awlaki” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.