The Somalian refugee who wounded 11 in an attack at Ohio State complained in a recent campus interview about the treatment of Muslims and expressed fear of a Donald Trump presidency, it was reported Wednesday.
Kevin Stankiewicz, a student journalist for the college newspaper, said he interviewed Abdul Razak Ali Artan on the first day of school and got an earful about American stereotypes of Muslims.
Authorities say Artan, 18, plowed his car onto the campus Monday and then slashed at passersby with a butcher knife before being shot dead by a campus cop.
Stankiewicz said it was “chilling” to learn the engaging business student had carried out the attack.
“My heart sank; that thoughtful, engaged student I had met on the first day of classes had snapped. He had tried to kill people,” Stankiewicz wrote in the Washington Post.
Stankiewicz recalled he interviewed Artan in August for 20 minutes for an article about new students. “He told me about his family fleeing Somalia when he was about 10 years old — including fuzzy memories of his native, war-torn land — and then about living for years in Pakistan and how much he enjoyed it,” Stankiewicz wrote.
“He bemoaned what he felt were Western misconceptions about Pakistan: ‘It’s not like people believe,’” wrote Stankiewicz, adding Artan told him that when he came to the US as a refugee, he spent time in Dallas, Texas, before moving to Columbus, which has a large Somali expat community.
He wrote that Artan “ticked off examples of Islamophobia that garnered media attention, such as the police being summoned because a man in Avon, Ohio, was speaking Arabic in a parking lot or when a college student was removed from a plane after he said ‘Inshallah’ in a phone conversation with his uncle.”At the time of the interview, the presidential campaign was heating up and he said Artan “spoke of his fears of then-candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric toward Muslims, what it might mean for immigrants and refugees, what it might mean for those, like him, who practice Islam openly. How ignorance about Islam propels bigotry and hatred.”
The FBI reported Wednesday it believed Artan received “inspiration” for the attack that left 11 wounded by watching Anwar al-Awlaki and ISIS videos.