COLUMBUS (Diya TV) — The Ohio State University student who carried out a knife attack on campus Monday said he was “sick and tired” of seeing his fellow Muslims “killed and tortured,” according to federal law enforcement officials.
Investigators are further examining the Facebook account of Abdul Razak Ali Artan to determine whether or not the attack was terrorism — ISIS has already referred to the young man as a “soldier of the Islamic State.”
In an earlier Facebook post Monday morning before the rampage, the Somalian immigrant urged America “to stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah,” a term for Muslim people at large. “By Allah, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims. You will not celebrate or enjoy any holiday.”
Artan drove his car into a group of people on the Columbus campus before exiting the vehicle and charging at others with a knife. Eleven people were hospitalized as a result of the attack.
Ohio State Police Officer Alan Horujko shot Artan after he failed to obey orders to stop.
On Tuesday, a self-described Islamic State news agency called Artan “a soldier of the Islamic State” who “carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens of international coalition countries.”
Artan came to the United States in 2014 as the child of a refugee. He had been living in Pakistan from 2007 to 2014.
Ohio State’s student newspaper, The Lantern, ran an interview in August with an Artan in which he criticized the media’s portrayal of Muslims and expressed concern about how he would be received on campus.
“I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. I’m a Muslim, it’s not what media portrays me to be,” he told the newspaper. “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads.”
