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Terror Networks
Al-Qaeda has new operations head
2002-02-14
  • A 30-year-old Palestinian has become Al Qaeda's new chief of operations and is believed to be organizing remnants of the network to carry out new attacks. American investigators said they were convinced that Abu Zubaydah was now trying to activate al Qaeda sleeper cells for new strikes. Investigators are eager to apprehend Abu Zubaydah because he is one of the few al Qaeda leaders believed to know the identities of the thousands of trainees that passed through the network's camps in Afghanistan and could still be awaiting instructions. American intelligence agencies believe that he was at Osama bin Laden's side in Afghanistan, and Bush administration officials say there is fragmentary evidence that he escaped to Pakistan.

    Abu Zubaydah first came to the attention of American counterterrorism experts as a major al Qaeda figure after they received reports that he had coordinated plots to attack the Los Angeles International Airport and tourist sites in Jordan in December 1999. Abu Zubaydah travels the world using false passports and multiple aliases. His full name is believed to be Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn Abu Zubaydah. Abu Zubaydah, reportedly born in Saudi Arabia, has taken over the job of Muhammad Atef, killed in a U.S. bombing raid in Afghanistan.
    * Abu Zubaydah (a.k.a. Abu Zubaida, Abd Al-Hadi Al-Wahab, Zain Al-Abidin Muhahhad Husain, Zain Al-Abidin Muhahhad Husain, Zayn Al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, Tariq). DOB 12 March 71. POB Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Abu-Zubaida was the "emir" of the Durunta and Khalden training camps. Some fairly recent background info is here. He also pops up in connection with the US Embassy in Paris plot. He gets passing reference here in connection with Ahmed Ressam. Also seems to be involved as a controller of the Jund Al Islam in Kurdistan.

    This becomes interesting: "It would be a grave mistake to imagine that Saddam’s animus against Saudi Arabia or his secular disposition would prevent him from working with the Wahhabi religious establishment or Abdallah if he found this could advance his designs against King Fahd, the Sudairis, or their American patrons. Sure enough, travelers from Iraq report that Saddam’s regime has lately encouraged the rise, in Iraq’s northern safe haven, of Salafism, a puritanical sect tied to Wahhabism that hitherto had been alien to Iraq. It is no surprise, then, that one of these Salafi movements inside Iraq, the Jund al-Islami, turns out to be a front for bin Laden." - David Wurmser, "The Saudi Connection" American Enterprise Institute for Policy Reseach, Dec 2001.

    There's another backgrounder on Jund al Islami here.
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

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