* Born in New Mexico in the United States in 1971, Al-Awlaki is a US citizen. He graduated in civil engineering from Colorado State University and holds a master's degree in educational leadership from San Diego State University. * Al-Awlaki's family is well-known in Yemen. His father is a former agriculture minister, Nasser Al-Awlaki. * Al-Awlaki is a former imam of mosques in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia. Two of those mosques were said to have been attended by some of the 11 September, 2001 hijackers. * He travelled to Yemen in 2004, where he taught at a university before being arrested and imprisoned in 2006 for suspected links to Al-Qaeda and involvement in attacks. * He was released in December 2007 after saying he had repented, a Yemeni security official said. But he was later charged again on similar counts and went into hiding. * Last year, the US administration authorised operations to capture or kill Al-Awlaki. "Awlaki is a proven threat," said a US official at the time. "He's being targeted." LINKS TO AQAP * Intelligence agencies had viewed Al-Awlaki chiefly as an Al-Qaeda sympathiser and recruiter for Islamist causes with possible ties to some of the 11 September, 2001 hijackers. * That assessment changed in late 2009 with revelations about his contacts with a Nigerian suspect in the attempted bombing of an airliner approaching Detroit on 25 December, claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and with a US Army psychiatrist accused of shooting dead 13 people at a Fort Hood military base in Texas on 5 November. * After the Christmas Day airliner plot, US and Yemeni officials said they learned that Al-Awlaki had met the would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. * Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist, had sent emails to Al-Awlaki, which were intercepted by US intelligence agencies and examined by US joint terrorism task forces. * Hassan was "a hero," Al-Awlaki wrote in a blog post after the attack. "He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people," he wrote. Al-Awlaki's website was closed down after the Fort Hood killings. IMPORTANCE TO AQAP * Internet-savvy and eloquent in English and Arabic, Al-Awlaki encouraged attacks on the United States and was seen as a man who could draw in more Al-Qaeda recruits from Western countries. * Britain's intelligence chief John Sawers singled out Al-Awlaki as a major threat in a speech last October, saying: "From his remote base in Yemen, Al-Qaeda leader and US national Anwar Al-Awlaki broadcasts propaganda and terrorist instruction in fluent English over the Internet." * Al-Awlaki is not a very senior Islamic cleric. Nor is he the leader of AQAP - that is Nasser Al-Wuhayshi - but he ranks as the group's most gifted English-language propagandist.
