How much for my left leg, asks US jihadi with $5 mn bounty on his head

A US extremist fighting with Islamist militants in Somalia on Friday brushed off a $5 million bounty offered by the State Department, jokingly asking how much he could get for his left leg.

A US extremist fighting with Islamist militants in Somalia on Friday brushed off a $5 million bounty offered by the state department, jokingly asking how much he could get for his left leg.

Alabama-born Omar Hamami - better known as Abu Mansur Al-Amriki or "the American" - is in Somalia, where he has fought with the Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents.

On Wednesday the US State Department's Rewards for Justice program offered the sizable reward for his arrest.

"As I'm a bit low on cash, how much is my left leg going for? I figure, Shamil Basayev did the one-leg jihad thing," he wrote on Twitter, referring to a dead Islamist commander of a Chechen rebel movement, who lost a leg in fighting the Russian army.

Hamami, 28, moved to Somalia in 2006 and began to work for Shebab recruiting young trainees through his English-language rap songs and videos, the State Department said in a statement.

He has since split from the main wing of the Shebab, who now want to kill him.

Hamami was indicted in 2009 by an Alabama district court for providing support to a terrorist organisation, and two years later he was placed on a US Treasury blacklist freezing all his assets in the United States.

The State Department also offered a $5 million bounty for Jehad Mostafa, a former resident of California, who left for Somalia in 2005 where he provided media support and lead foreign fighters.