The Test

December 23, 2019·22 min·1 clip

When Putzel asked Omar Hamami 'have you killed anyone?' Omar replied 'I can say yes to the question, but I don't know to the how many' — and said his conscience was clean because the cause was just.

Omar calls himself "the same Omar, in a new box." The host sits with that split, moving between email jokes about 90s bands and the harder picture of Omar in Somalia. His brother cannot make the two versions fit: someone familiar enough to recognize, far enough away to wonder what he is really doing. The host keeps pressing. After an interview in Alabama, he asks how Omar would explain himself to his parents and what he wants them to understand. Omar does not soften much. He says the old self is still there, but the container around it has changed. Then the talk turns to killing. Omar says combat is often too chaotic for fighters to know whose bullet hit whom, even when bodies appear afterward. He talks about nerves in blunt terms, comparing the feeling to fear before giving a speech. His justification is religious. Omar says his cause is just, that killing has been prescribed, and that guilt follows wrongdoing. The host pushes on conscience. Omar says that if the target was definitely at war with Islam, he cannot see where guilt would come in. The episode then moves beyond one man. In a video, Omar lectures young men about leaving families, cities, ice, and candy bars while they wait for the enemy. One listener becomes important: Ahmed, one of the Somali-Americans from Minnesota who had disappeared, according to the FBI. Robert Mueller appears through the record. Authorities describe Ahmed as the first U.S. citizen believed to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing, part of a coordinated attack in northern Somalia that killed at least 20 people. U.S. authorities say Omar orchestrated it. Omar says he was close to Ahmed but had nothing to do with the operation.

As heard by us

A tense portrait of one man split between familiar banter and armed conviction.

The episode follows Omar through two versions of himself: the joking email exchanges about 90s bands, and the harder vocabulary of Somalia, al-Shabaab, and sacrifice.

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Why you'd press play

When a story splits between everyday banter and al-Shabaab, you want the whole picture.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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