DAPHNE, Ala. (WPMI) - The U.S. government is willing to give someone a $10 million payday for information to bring two of the FBI's most wanted terrorists to justice, the State Department said Wednesday afternoon.
The reward, split at $5 million a piece is for the capture and conviction of Jehad Mostafa and Omar Hammami, a Daphne native.
Investigators have been searching for Hammami since 2009, when a federal grand jury in Mobile indicted him on 3 charges of providing support terrorists and terrorist attacks. Hammami left the U.S. for Somalia in 2006 to helping run al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda's Africa network.
Tensions between Hammami and fellow leaders left him feeling like a target himself. "I record this message today because I feel my life may be in danger by al-Shabaab (inaudible) due to some differences that occurred between us," Hammami said in a video posted on YouTube in March 2012.
For months, rumors flooded the internet of Hammami's death -- only to quashed by a memoir published online in 2012.
In their first televised interview, Hammami's parents told Current TV, the computer is their only tool to find out if their son is still alive.
"To know my son is alive, that's enough for me," Shafik Hammami sobbed from his Daphne home last year.
Hammami's mother, Debra, read from her son's memoir as if to read a letter home.
"Of course I would think of going to the place I was born. everybody does, but I couldn't live there; what I would like though is to have a 3 day visit to see my mom, my dad and my sister," she read fighting tears, "I often wonder what the whole experience has done to them and whether or not we'll ever meet again," she recited.
Hammami's father learned of the reward during a phone call with Local 15 News Reporter Derrick Rose Wednesday. He said the reward for his son's capture at least implies his son is still alive..
"It's all in god's hands," he said, "Whatever god has deemed for [Omar], I accept."
