The Egyptian known as Midhat Mursi Al Sayyid Umar was supposed to be dead, killed in a US missile strike on suspected terrorists in Pakistan’s turbulent northwestern tribal belt on 13 January, 2006. Pakistani generals claimed he was one of several senior Al Qaeda figures slain by Hellfire missiles fired from a Central Intelligence Agency Predator at a clandestine gathering in the village of Damadola near the Afghan border.But it seems that Mursi, a chemical engineer known as Osama bin Laden’s “sorcerer”, with a $5m US bounty on his head, is still alive and, the Americans believe, working in secret laboratories across the badlands of the tribal zone to develop chemical, biological and radiological weapons – and maybe even nuclear weapons – for Al Qaeda.
US intelligence officials were never convinced that Mursi, alias Abu Khabab Al Masri, died in Damadola and now even Pakistani intelligence chiefs concede that heÂ’s alive and kicking. The Americans say that electronic surveillance of known and suspected Al Qaeda figures in recent months has turned up conversations in which Mursi is mentioned in the present tense.
| Al-Qaeda's resident mad scientist doesn't appear to be a real productive fellow. There haven't been an awful lot of superweapons coming out of his lab: no epidemics devastating Denver, no cloud of poison gas over Galveston, no nuke taking out Newark. |