Background image of Facebook page of "Eric Omar Harroun," posted March 2, 2013 [1]
On March 11, 2013, Foxnews.com revealed that the American fighter who appeared in YouTube videos alongside Syrian rebels is Eric Harroun, a former U.S. soldier.
On March 29, 2013, CNN reported that the FBI had arrested Eric Harroun in Virginia, at a hotel near Dulles International Airport. Harroun was charged with illegally using a weapon on behalf of Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN), a U.S. designated terrorist group in Syria; according to the U.S. designation, JN is an alias of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) group.
According to the report, in January 2013 Harroun entered Syria to fight the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and posted on the Internet photos and videos of himself holding RPGs and other weapons.
Harroun also maintained a Facebook account, under the name "Eric Omar Harroun." His background image, dated March 2, 2013, shows him with an RPG in his left hand and a rifle in his right. The account has 361 Facebook "friends."
Another photo, posted March 19, shows him wearing a military uniform and smiling. A comment on the photo says: "May Allah... assist you my brother. My prayers is [sic] always with the Syrian mujahidin."
In another photo, a masked man believed to be Harroun is shown standing in a room with an AK47 on his right shoulder.
According to Harroun's Facebook page, he was born June 11, 1982, on Elephant Island in Antarctica, has never been married, and has no children. The page states that he worked as a Mortgage Loan Officer from 2006 to 2008 at Artisan Mortgage Company in Phoenix, AZ. Among his interests he lists Masjid Annur Islamic Center in Sacramento, CA, and notes that his inspirational figures include Che Guevara, British MP George Galloway, George Washington, and Yasser Arafat.
His most recent "likes" include a Russian pro-Syrian revolution page ("liked" March 24), a "Solidarity for Free Syria" page ("liked" March 23), and Liwa' Omar bin Al-As ("liked" January 4). The jihadi group Liwa' Omar bin Al-As is part of the Islamic Syrian Front, a collection of 11 resistance groups whose aim is to topple the Assad regime and establish an Islamic state. Also among his "likes" are many mainstream Western Facebook pages, such as a television series, music, and so on.
Endnote:
[1] facebook.com/eric.harroun
