US: Ohio suspect voiced Daesh support before attack

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) – The suspect shot dead by police after carrying out a rampage at an Ohio university campus made several extremist rants on social media before the attack, multiple news outlets said Tuesday.

"If you want us Muslims to stop carrying lone wolf attacks, then make peace" with Daesh, Somali-born Abdul Razak Ali Artan wrote on social media, according to an Associated Press report. The news agency relied on an anonymous law enforcement official.

"Every single Muslim who disapproves of my actions is a sleeper cell, waiting for a signal. I am warning you Oh America!" he added.

Amaq, a news agency close to Daesh, called Artan a "soldier of the Islamic State," using another name for Daesh. It is unclear if there were any formal ties between the university student and the group.

Artan was a refugee from Somalia who was living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident, and was attending Ohio State University. Eleven people were injured at the school in the car and knife attack before he was fatally shot by a police officer.

"America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that," he wrote using an Arabic term to refer to the global Muslim community.

NBC News reported that Artan posted a photograph to Facebook that contained a writing that condemned the alleged mistreatment of Muslims around the world. In addition to voicing anger at the U.S., it mentioned the treatment of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims and cited Anwar al-Awlaki, the deceased former chief propagandist of al-Qaeda's Arabian Peninsula affiliate.

Asked if the attack could be described as a terrorist act, the White House said, "there is plenty of available evidence to indicate that this individual may have been motivated by extremism and may have been motivated by a desire to carry out an act of terrorism".

Artan was featured in a story by Ohio State University's student-run newspaper, the Lantern, in August.

In the story, he is quoted as saying that he was scared to pray at the school and bemoaned a dearth of designated prayer rooms.

"If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen," he told the paper.

"But, I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads so they’re just going to have it and it, it’s going to make them feel uncomfortable. I was kind of scared right now. But I just did it. I relied on God. I went over to the corner and just prayed," he said.