Samir Khan
| Samir Khan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Samir Zafar Khan December 25, 1985 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia |
| Died | September 30, 2011 (aged 25) Yemen |
| Occupation | Editor and publisher of Inspire magazine |
Samir ibn Zafar Khan (December 25, 1985 – September 30, 2011) was the Pakistani American editor and publisher of Inspire magazine, an English-language online magazine reported to be published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). A citizen of the United States, he was killed in a drone strike in Yemen together with Anwar al-Awlaki.
Khan was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to parents of Pakistani descent and grew up in Queens, New York. He also spent some of his teenage years living in Westbury, New York. He graduated from W. Tresper Clarke High School in 2003 where he wrote for the school newspaper, participated in cheerleading and was an active member of the glee club. According to his classmates, he refused to recite Pledge of Allegiance and blamed Americans for the September 11 attacks. Khan's father, Zafar Khan, is an information technology executive. The family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2004.
He lived in Charlotte before leaving the country for Yemen in 2009. He reportedly cut off ties with his family when he left the U.S. After Khan's death, a family friend told CNN that Khan's father did not agree with his son's ideas and had sought help to change his son's radical views on several occasions.
In 2003 Khan started a Blogspot blog called "InshallahShaheed" or "Martyr, God willing" from his parents' basement. After moving to Yemen he became the editor of Inspire. In an article written by Khan and published in Inspire titled, "I am proud to be a traitor to America," Khan outlined his grievances against the United States. According to Ben Venzke, CEO of IntelCenter, "The primary focus of the magazine is to inspire individuals to not just fly to Yemen and join the group, but rather to provide them with the inspiration, the ideological framework, the targeting philosophy and the practical mechanics of building a bomb or conducting a shooting." Another article by Khan was titled "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom." Khan authored a sixteen-page English-language manual entitled Expectations Full about how to deal with the difficulties of life training to be a suicide bomber. The manual includes claims that the government of Saudi Arabia is "working alongside evil jinns" and called for attacks within the United States.
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