The Yemeni cleric who praised the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, was born in Las Cruces while his father was at New Mexico State University.

Imam Anwar al-Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Aulaqi, returned to Las Cruces in 2002 to accept an award as NMSU's distinguished international alumnus that year, according to a NMSU newsletter.

The difference in the spelling of the surname stems from different transliterations from Arabic into English.

According to the alumni newsletter, al-Aulaqi graduated from NMSU with bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural economics in 1969 and 1971, then went to the University of Nebraska for a doctorate.

A researcher and faculty member at the University of Minnesota from 1975 to 1977, he returned to Yemen in 1978 to join the faculty of Sana'a University's economics and business college, then became dean of the agricultural college, the newsletter says.

The newsletter says al-Aulaqi later served as his country's minister of agriculture for two years and as an economic adviser to Yemen's president for four years, then returned to Sana'a University as vice president. After serving as president of another university in Yemen, he became president of Sana'a University in July 2001. He is no longer with the school.

Sana'a University was founded in 1970 in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, and now has up to 14,000 students. "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, now in prison, reportedly visited the school while living in Yemen before he left for Afghanistan.

Al-Aulaqi's son, the media-savvy Anwar al-Awlaki, reportedly was born in 1971. After going to Yemen at age 7 with his parents, he returned to the United States in 1991 for college. He took a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Colorado State University in Fort Collins and a master's in educational leadership from San Diego State University.

While working on a doctorate in human resource development at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., al-Awlaki was a leader at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., where Hassan attended and where his mother's funeral was held in May 2001.

National Public Radio's Ray Suarez, who interviewed al-Awlaki shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, reports that in 2000 when al-Awlaki was preaching at a San Diego mosque, he met Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who are believed to have hijacked the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Al-Awlaki initially spoke out against the Sept. 11 attacks, comparing them to the killing of Iraqi civilians in the first Persian Gulf war and the killing of Palestinians in Israel, but since leaving the United States for Yemen in 2002, he has promoted militant Islam via his Web blog at www.anwar-alawlaki.com.

In 2006, he was among five Yemenis arrested on charges of kidnapping a Shiite teenager for ransom and being involved in an al-Qaida plot to kidnap a U.S. military attaché. He was freed in December 2007 after promising not to leave the country. His father, al-Aulaqi, recently told the AP that his son disappeared eight months ago. He is believed to be hiding in a mountainous region that is a refuge for Islamic militants.

Three days after Hassan, an Army psychiatrist, allegedly killed 12 soldiers and a civilian and wounded 29 others at the Army base near Killeen, Texas, al-Awlaki used his English-language Web blog to call Hassan a "hero."

"He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslin and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people," al-Awlaki wrote Monday. "The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal."

Al-Awlaki's Web blog was taken offline Tuesday.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.