Washington, March 14: A man arrested in Yemen for alleged ties to the al-Qaeda terrorism network is a former employee of a nuclear power plant in the United States, reported the New York Times in its Saturday edition.
Sharif Mobley, 26, who was arrested earlier this month – and then subdued again during a failed escape attempt from a hospital in which one security guard died – had worked at nuclear plants in the US for six years, reported the paper.
However, the paper quoted the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as saying that it “is not aware of any security-related concerns or incidents related toMobley’s prior employment.”
According to one of the power plants, Mobley performed routine labor and maintenance and has passed security checks when he worked at plans in the US states of Pennsylvania and Maryland between 2002 and 2008.
Like Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in Texas in November, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day, Mobley was also in contact with Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric whose sermons are believed to have inspired several to launch attacks against the US.
Mobley is the son of Somali immigrants. His parents, Charles and Cynthia, say they are trying to get more information about him and added that they had been visited by FBI agents, reported the paper.
——-Agencies