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Adam Yahiye Gadahn listed Los Angeles and Melbourne as new targets for terrorist attacks.

Southern California native 'Azzam the American' went from convert to al-Qaeda spokesman

The videos started in 2004. The speaker on the tape wore a head scarf that covered everything, but his eyes. He identified himself as "Azzam the American" and spoke for an hour, warning of the impending violence that would wash US streets with blood.

TNS

The videos started in 2004. The speaker on the tape wore a head scarf that covered everything, but his eyes. He identified himself as "Azzam the American" and spoke for an hour, warning of the impending violence that would wash US streets with blood.

Almost a year later, he emerged again, listing Los Angeles and Melbourne as new targets for terrorist attacks. "Don't count on us demonstrating restraint or compassion," he said.

Initially only his voice was recognisable, but by the time he made his third video in 2006, he had dropped his disguise. Azzam the American - or Azzam al-Amriki - was Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a Southern California native who had stepped onto the world stage as a spokesman for al-Qaeda.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that Gadahn was killed in a US operation in Pakistan in January.

He had ascended into al-Qaeda's inner circle, meeting with Osama bin Laden and self-proclaimed September 11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Two of the videos in which he appeared also featured al-Qaeda's No 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Dropping out of American society in the late 1990s, he travelled to Pakistan, attended training camps in Afghanistan and aligned himself with senior al-Qaeda officials.

He initially worked as a translator but grew to become a critical propagandist, valued for his ability to speak to the American people in a familiar idiom.

He had been on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists and was the first American since the second world war era to be charged with treason. The US government had offered a US$1-million reward for information leading to his arrest.

Gadahn was the grandson of a Jewish urologist, Carl Pearlman, who was well known in the philanthropic circles of Orange County. Pearlman's son, Philip, dropped out of the University of California, Irvine in the 1960s, developed a passion for psychedelic guitar and moved to Oregon. After a religious conversion, he changed his surname to Gadahn and moved to a 40-acre goat ranch in Riverside County.

His mother was raised Catholic, and Gadahn was home-schooled. At 16, he left his family's home and moved in with his grandparents in Santa Ana.

Writing on a website years later, he described turning from death metal to Christian radio for spiritual answers in an attempt to fill a "void I had created from myself." Disenchanted with Christianity, he began visiting Islamic websites and internet discussion groups. His spiritual journey took him to the Islamic Society of Orange County, where he met two radical Muslims, Khalil Deek and Hisham Diab.

"Deek and Diab met (Gadahn) at the mosque, and (Diab) brought him home like a lost dog," Saraah Olson, Diab's ex-wife, said in 2006.

In 1995, Gadahn converted to Islam. His aunt, Nancy Pearlman, described him in 2004 as a "sweet, loving individual" who wasn't fanatical about his adopted religion.

By the time the 2004 video appeared, few could believe Gadahn could play a key role in al-Qaeda. "It was not as if he was on the radar screen as the top 10 terrorist or anything like that," one counterterrorism official said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: A Californian's journey to voice of al-Qaeda
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