Tennessee GI-Killer Boasts of al-Qaeda Ties

A Muslim convert who opened fire on an Arkansas military recruiting station, killing one soldier and wounding another, claimed he has ties to al-Qaeda in a letter to his trial judge requesting he be allowed to change his plea to guilty. Memphis-born Abdulhakim Muhammad shot the soldiers last year, 4 months after he was deported back to the US from a 16-month stay in Yemen, the New York Times reports.

"I wasn’t insane or post traumatic, nor was I forced to do this act,” Muhammad wrote, calling himself a soldier in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and justifying the shootings as revenge for the killing of Muslims by American troops. The death penalty would have to be waived before the judge in the capital murder case could accept the guilty plea, something the prosecutor says he's highly unlikely to do. "We're on" for a trial, he said.
(More Little Rock, Arkansas stories.)