By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Dahir Ahmed Adan, who stabbed 20 people at a Minnesota mall, was different than most terrorists.
Just months before the Sept. 17 attacks, the 20-year-old academic standout became interested in Islam and began to distance himself from friends, the FBI said Thursday.
“We were told (he) had not previously shown an interest in religion,” Minneapolis FBI Special Agent in Charge Rick Thornton said at a news conference, the Associated Press reports.
“The totality of Dahir Adan’s behavior and the actions suggest he may have been radicalized either with the influence of others or on his own,” Thornton said.
The shift was so sudden that Adan’s family believed he was doing as good as he used to do,” the attorney for Adan’s family, Abdulwahid Osman, said. “That is not the son they knew.”
Adan used two steak knives in the attack before he was shot and killed.
“We have numerous credible witness accounts of him asking victims during the attack if they were Muslim and at least one instance yelling ‘Allahu akbar’ while stabbing one of his victims and others heard him yelling ‘Islam Islam’ during the attack,” Thornton said.
