SANAA, YEMEN – An airstrike Sunday killed a top Al Qaeda leader on the FBI's most wanted list for his role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole warship, Yemeni officials said. The airstrike resembled earlier U.S. drone attacks, but the U.S. did not immediately confirm it.| Accordion Lady is here to warm up the crowd; Fat Lady will make her appearance when we get official US confirmation, DNA testing and/or a severed head... |
Al-Quso, 37, was on the FBI's most wanted list, with a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. He was indicted in the U.S. for his role in the 2000 bombing in the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, in which 17 American sailors were killed and 39 injured.
He served more than five years in a Yemeni prison for his role in the attack and was released in 2007. He briefly escaped prison in 2003 but later turned himself in to serve the rest of his sentence.
| And after his release he went back to his old ways. Which he won't do anymore... |
Al-Quso was also one of the most senior Al Qaeda leaders publicly linked to the 2009 Christmas airliner attack. He has allegedly met with the suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Yemen before he left on his way to execute his failed bombing over Detroit.
In December 2010, al-Quso was designated a global terrorist by the State Department, an indication that his role in Al Qaeda's Yemen branch had grown more prominent.
Local Yemeni official Abu Bakr bin Farid and the Yemeni Embassy in Washington confirmed al-Quso was killed in Rafd, a remote mountain valley in Shabwa. It is the area where many of Al Qaeda leaders are believed to have taken cover, including the U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen last year.
Yemeni government officials reported that Al-Quso and al-Awlaki were killed in an airstrike in 2009 in Rafd, but they both resurfaced alive.
| That's why we'd like more confirmation than what the Yemenis have offered so far... |
| He looked fabulous in a burqa... |
Al-Quso's association with Al Qaeda dated back more than a decade, when he met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Bin Laden allegedly told him to "eliminate the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula."
From there he rose through the ranks. He was assigned in Aden to videotape the 1998 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, but he fell asleep. Despite the lapse, the local leader, Nasser al-Wahishi, declared him the regional leader in Aden. He was also believed to have played a prominent role in Al Qaeda's attack and capture last year of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province.