Al-Qaeda man worked in US Nuke plant

A New Jersey man charged in Yemen as an Al Qaeda member worked at nuclear power plants in the U.S., officials said Thursday. Sharif Mobley, a 26-year-old American native of Somali heritage, was arrested in Yemen this month in a roundup of suspected Al Qaeda members.

He was being treated at a hospital in San'a when he killed one guard and wounded another in an escape attempt, officials said.

Before Mobley moved to Yemen two years ago, ostensibly to learn Arabic and study the Koran, he worked for several contractors at three nuclear power plants in New Jersey from 2002 to 2008, PSE&G Nuclear spokesman Joe Delmar said.

Mobley carried supplies and did maintenance work at the plants on Artificial Island in Lower Alloways Creek and worked at other plants in the region as well, Delmar said.

He satisfied federal background checks as recently as 2008, Delmar said.
Mobley was always supervised, caused no problems and was not believed to have breached security at the plants, said Mike Drewniak, a spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Mohammed Albasha, spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, said there was no immediate connection between Mobley's activities or capture in Yemen and his work at the plants.

It was not immediately clear if Mobley worked at any of the region's other power plants. Joe Szafran, a spokesman for Exelon Corp., which owns nuclear plants at three facilities in eastern Pennsylvania, referred questions to the FBI.

The FBI declined to comment on the case.

"We don't know nothing. We're trying to hear something," Mobley's father, Charles Mobley, told New Jersey's WMGM-TV.

Sharif Mobley is the latest example of what anti-terrorism experts fear is a growing trend: the radicalization of American Muslims who join overseas terrorist groups.

Yemeni groups are of special concern, as are Somali-Americans.

The Al Qaeda branch in Yemen was linked to the failed Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner. Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in the Fort Hood shooting spree, exchanged e-mails with an extremist cleric in Yemen.

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