Mar 12 (THAINDIAN NEWS) A New Jersey man, 26 year old Sharif Mobley, was arrested and charged as an Al Qaida member in Yemen this month in a round up of suspected Al Qaida members, officials said on Thursday.

Sharif Mobley is a native to America of Samali heritage. While being treated at a hospital in San’a, he killed a guard and wounded another, attempting to escape. He had learned Arabic, and studied the Koran while still in America, before moving to Yemen two years ago. Between the years of 2002 and 2008, he worked for several different contractors at three different nuclear power plants in New Jersey, according to PSE&G Nuclear’s Manager of Nuclear Communications, Joe Delmar. Mobley worked at each plant for several weeks at a time, mostly during refueling outages. He carried supplies and did maintenance work.

Mobley passed the background checks to work at these types of plants in America as recently as 2008. He was always supervised, and had caused no problems, nor was he believed to have broken any of the rules, or breached security security at these plants, according to Mike Drewniak, who is a spokesman for the Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.

The FBI refused to comment on the case, and Mobley’s father, Charles Mobley said, “We don’t know nothing. We’re trying to hear something.”

Mobley graduated from high school in 2002 in Buena, New Jersey, and has also lived in Philadelphia, and Newark, Deleware. He has organized religious pilgrimages for other Muslims to the Middle East. One man, Umar Hassan-El, who had room mated with Mobley during such a pilgrimage spoke out, “He gave no indication that he would join a group that he’s alleged to be a part of right now,” said Hassan-El. “I never heard that boy ever talk about shooting anybody, killing anybody.” And a high school classmate, Roman Castro, who served in the Army, told the Associated Press that the last time he had seen Mobley, 4 years ago that Mobley had shouted at him, “Get the hell away from me, you Muslim killer!”

A former classmate, Dawn Bass told the press that she was “shocked” to hear of the allegations. She called Mobley a sweetheart who was always showing off karate moves in the back of the class. She said, Mobley “was just a regular kid, he was always talking to everybody - he was not shy.”