Evidence of extremism as Fort Hood killer awakes

The US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas last Thursday has regained consciousness and begun talking to medical staff. It is not certain when the FBI and the Army's Criminal Investigation Command will be allowed by doctors to interview Major Nadal Malik Hasan - but it is clear that they now have serious questions to ask about his links with Muslim extremists, possibly even al-Qaeda.

In the immediate aftermath of the deadly rampage at the world's biggest US military base, Hasan was portrayed as a devout Muslim, but not a fundamentalist. New evidence has raised the possibility that he does hold extremist views - so much so that his actions could be categorised as terrorism.

The US Senate committee on homeland security is now to investigate whether it was an act of terrorism. Committee chairman Joseph Lieberman believes there were "strong warning signs" that Hasan was an extremist who should have been discharged from the army long ago.

These are the key indicators to emerge:

♦ Hasan had attracted the attention of US intelligence some months ago by trying to communicate by 'electronic means' with figures associated with al-Qaeda, according to two intelligence officials who spoke to ABC News.

♦ In 2001 he regularly attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia (above) where two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, went for spiritual guidance from the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. It is not clear whether Hasan ever met al-Awlaki, who has since moved to Yemen. But yesterday the cleric blogged that Hasan was "a hero". He added: "He is a man of conscience who could not bear the contradiction of being a Muslim and fighting against his own people."

♦ Duane Reasoner, an 18-year-old whom Hasan was "mentoring" in the ways of Islam at his local mosque in Texas, said this week he had no pity for the dead because "they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims". If this was what Hasan was teaching a new convert to Islam, it suggests extremist views.

♦ Reports from the Walter Reed medical centre in Washington DC, where Hasan worked for six years before transferring to Texas, suggest the army ignored signs of an extremist in their midst. As The First Post reported yesterday, it is claimed Hasan once gave a lecture about Islam to fellow doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

♦ Anecdotal evidence of extremist views has come from former army colleagues. Val Finnell, who attended a course with Hasan in Maryland in 2007, said he went on anti-American rants. "We were all very concerned about his beliefs and what he was capable of," said Finnell, "and I'm not surprised that he did what he did."

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama and his wife Michele were due to fly to Texas today to attend a memorial service at Fort Hood for the 12 soldiers and one civilian killed by Hasan.

The trip comes amid criticism in some quarters that Obama did not immediately fly to Fort Hood - while his predecessor George Bush made a low-key visit the day after the shooting - and that the new president is less single-minded about national security than Bush.