Top jihadi strategist brought Iraq’s insurgents into the al-Qaeda fold
Excerpt -
Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Iraqi had often visited the Bajaur tribal region, one of the main centres of al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. US officials said last night that they believed him to be the mastermind behind two attempts in 2002 to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
[I thought they said those attacks were all the work of al-Libbi. Does that mean Al-Libbi was not number 3? Does that mean al-Libbi was just a local errand boy like I said two years ago? :) I know I am beating a dead horse here but considering the number of people who said I was up in the night back then I just have to do a little end zone dance :) okay I am done. Now isn’t it interesting that this guy moved so easily between remote areas on the Pakistan Afghan border region and Iraq :).]
April 28, 2007
Top jihadi strategist brought Iraq’s insurgents into the al-Qaeda fold
Sean O’Neill and Tim Reid
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi is among the most important figures to have been captured since 9/11 and his detention is a significant blow to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
More than anyone else, it was Abd al-Hadi who rebuilt al-Qaeda after its leadership fled from the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Once secured in the tribal areas of Pakistan, he began forging a firm alliance with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and bringing the jihad in Iraq under the al-Qaeda banner. He ran terror training camps, planned strategy with bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and directed operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Europe.
Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Iraqi had often visited the Bajaur tribal region, one of the main centres of al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. US officials said last night that they believed him to be the mastermind behind two attempts in 2002 to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
Compared with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the planner of the 9/11 atrocities whom he will join in the “high-value detainee programme” in Guantanamo Bay — Abd al-Hadi’s operations were less ambitious but usually more attainable.
Security sources say Abd al-Hadi masterminded a series of plots to carry out suicide attacks in Britain, using young British Muslims including the 7/7 bombers. There have been previous attempts to capture or kill him. In 2004 the Pakistani Army mounted a huge assault on a compound that was thought to be his base. More than 70 people died.
Abd al-Hadi, whose full name is Nashwan Abdulrazaq Abdulbaqi, was born in 1961 in the Kurdish city of Mosul, northern Iraq. He did national service in Saddam Hussein’s Army, rising to the rank of major, but left for Afghanistan in the mid-1980s to join the jihad against the Soviet Union.
His military experience and expertise, as well as his commitment to the Islamist cause, attracted the attention of bin Laden and his fledgling al-Qaeda movement. Abd al-Hadi commanded many of the training camps that were established by al-Qaeda when it returned to Afghanistan after the Taleban seized control there in 1996. After the invasion of Afghanistan, Abd al-Hadi maintained a strong relationship with the Taleban and has used those bonds in the campaign against Western forces in Afghanistan.
In August 2005 he appeared in an al-Qaeda propaganda video that showed militants in Afghanistan — including Europeans, Arabs and other fighters — preparing to attack US troops. In the video Abd al-Hadi said that the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had created “two fronts” for recruiting terrorists to the cause of global jihad.“Now all the world is united behind Mullah Omar and Sheikh Osama,” he said.
Abd al-Hadi is now locked up in the maximum-security Camp 5 block of Guantanamo Bay, set aside for the most significant terror suspects.
The Pentagon said that Abd al-Hadi had been classified as a “high-value” detainee, along with 14 others. They spend 23 hours a day inside a 7ft (3m by 2m) cell. The classification indicated that US officials believed the capture had a significant effect on al-Qaeda operations and that the prisoner was capable of providing high-quality intelligence.
CNN cited unnamed US officials saying that Abd al-Hadi came into CIA custody after President Bush’s speech last September on the agency’s programme of interrogating high-value prisoners. At that time, the president said, there were “no terrorists” in the CIA programme.
Abd al-Hadi faces a closed-door hearing to determine his status. It will be overseen by a “presiding officer” who must determine if he can be designated as an “unlawful enemy combatant”. If he is given this classification, then the US does not have to charge him or try him.
The US Rewards For Justice programme described Abd al-Hadi as one of bin Laden’s “top global deputies” who remained in contact with his emir. A reward of $1 million (£500,000) was offered for his capture. The reality is that his arrest was of much greater value.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1717580.ece
April 28, 2007
7/7 ‘mastermind’ is seized in Iraq
Sean O’Neill, Tim Reid and Michael Evans
The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.
Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.
Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.
Abd al-Hadi recognised the potential for turning young Muslim radicals from Britain who wanted to become mujahidin in Afghanistan or Iraq into terrorists who could carry out attacks in their home country. He realised that their knowledge of Britain, possession of British passports and natural command of English made them ideal recruits. After al-Qaeda restructured its operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas he sought out young Britons for instruction at training camps. In late 2004 Abd al-Hadi met Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds, at a militant camp in Pakistan and, in the words of a senior investigator, “retasked them” to become suicide bombers.
They were sent back to Britain where they led the terrorist cell that carried out the 7/7 bombings, killing 52 Tube and bus passengers.
Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Hadi was also in contact with Rachid Rauf, a Birmingham man now in prison in Pakistan and alleged to be a key figure in last summer’s alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight.
Abd al-Hadi has also been linked to a number of other foiled al-Qaeda plots to carry out attacks in Britain. But the Security Service, which has previously sent officials to question detainees at Guantanamo Bay, may not have the opportunity to question him directly.
The Government’s recently adopted position in favour of closing Guantanamo Bay is likely to act as a bar on agents travelling there. British Intelligence would have to rely on relaying questions it would like asked by American interrogators.
Security sources said they assessed Abd al-Hadi as a key operational commander, high up the chain in the al-Qaeda structure who was behind many key plots in the UK.
He had a close link with another arrested al-Qaeda figure and, the sources said, would have “a wealth of information”. He is thought to have been in contact with Osama bin Laden before his capture and might be able to provide information about his leader’s whereabouts.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Abd al-Hadi had been classified as a “high-value detainee” at Guantanamo, and joined 14 others, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, as the most senior terror suspects at the Cuba prison.
Mr Whitman refused to say when or where he was captured, or by whom. “Abd al-Hadi was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage al-Qaeda's affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets,” Mr Whitman said.
He added that he was a key al-Qaeda paramilitary leader in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, and between 2002 and 2004 led efforts to attack US forces in Afghanistan with terrorist units based in Pakistan.
In a lecture this week Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, commander of Sctoland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, said that the central al-Qaeda leadership was behind a spate of terror plots against Britain.
He said: “We have seen how al-Qaeda has been able to survive a prolonged multinational assault on its structures, personnel and logistics. It has certainly retained its ability to deliver centrally directed attacks here in the UK. In case after case, the hand of core al-Qaeda can be clearly seen.”
Sources said last night that few figures had been more important at the centre of the revived al-Qaeda. Abd al-Hadi is credited with forming its alliance with the insurgency in Iraq.
US officials said he was associated with leaders of other extremist groups allied with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Taleban.
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, told The Times that catching Abd al-Hadi was important but that it did not spell the end of al-Qaeda.
He said Abd al-Hadi had been an important figure in developing al-Qaeda’s strategy in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and also helped to redirect its terrorist strategy in Europe.
Mr Scheuer, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, said: “It is a blow for al-Qaeda, especially in Iraq, where it will have consequences.
“But al-Qaeda always plans for succession, and there will have been someone lined up to take his place. It is nonsense to think that al-Qaeda is dead.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1717571.ece
Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Iraqi had often visited the Bajaur tribal region, one of the main centres of al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. US officials said last night that they believed him to be the mastermind behind two attempts in 2002 to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
[I thought they said those attacks were all the work of al-Libbi. Does that mean Al-Libbi was not number 3? Does that mean al-Libbi was just a local errand boy like I said two years ago? :) I know I am beating a dead horse here but considering the number of people who said I was up in the night back then I just have to do a little end zone dance :) okay I am done. Now isn’t it interesting that this guy moved so easily between remote areas on the Pakistan Afghan border region and Iraq :).]
April 28, 2007
Top jihadi strategist brought Iraq’s insurgents into the al-Qaeda fold
Sean O’Neill and Tim Reid
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi is among the most important figures to have been captured since 9/11 and his detention is a significant blow to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
More than anyone else, it was Abd al-Hadi who rebuilt al-Qaeda after its leadership fled from the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Once secured in the tribal areas of Pakistan, he began forging a firm alliance with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and bringing the jihad in Iraq under the al-Qaeda banner. He ran terror training camps, planned strategy with bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and directed operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Europe.
Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Iraqi had often visited the Bajaur tribal region, one of the main centres of al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. US officials said last night that they believed him to be the mastermind behind two attempts in 2002 to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
Compared with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the planner of the 9/11 atrocities whom he will join in the “high-value detainee programme” in Guantanamo Bay — Abd al-Hadi’s operations were less ambitious but usually more attainable.
Security sources say Abd al-Hadi masterminded a series of plots to carry out suicide attacks in Britain, using young British Muslims including the 7/7 bombers. There have been previous attempts to capture or kill him. In 2004 the Pakistani Army mounted a huge assault on a compound that was thought to be his base. More than 70 people died.
Abd al-Hadi, whose full name is Nashwan Abdulrazaq Abdulbaqi, was born in 1961 in the Kurdish city of Mosul, northern Iraq. He did national service in Saddam Hussein’s Army, rising to the rank of major, but left for Afghanistan in the mid-1980s to join the jihad against the Soviet Union.
His military experience and expertise, as well as his commitment to the Islamist cause, attracted the attention of bin Laden and his fledgling al-Qaeda movement. Abd al-Hadi commanded many of the training camps that were established by al-Qaeda when it returned to Afghanistan after the Taleban seized control there in 1996. After the invasion of Afghanistan, Abd al-Hadi maintained a strong relationship with the Taleban and has used those bonds in the campaign against Western forces in Afghanistan.
In August 2005 he appeared in an al-Qaeda propaganda video that showed militants in Afghanistan — including Europeans, Arabs and other fighters — preparing to attack US troops. In the video Abd al-Hadi said that the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had created “two fronts” for recruiting terrorists to the cause of global jihad.“Now all the world is united behind Mullah Omar and Sheikh Osama,” he said.
Abd al-Hadi is now locked up in the maximum-security Camp 5 block of Guantanamo Bay, set aside for the most significant terror suspects.
The Pentagon said that Abd al-Hadi had been classified as a “high-value” detainee, along with 14 others. They spend 23 hours a day inside a 7ft (3m by 2m) cell. The classification indicated that US officials believed the capture had a significant effect on al-Qaeda operations and that the prisoner was capable of providing high-quality intelligence.
CNN cited unnamed US officials saying that Abd al-Hadi came into CIA custody after President Bush’s speech last September on the agency’s programme of interrogating high-value prisoners. At that time, the president said, there were “no terrorists” in the CIA programme.
Abd al-Hadi faces a closed-door hearing to determine his status. It will be overseen by a “presiding officer” who must determine if he can be designated as an “unlawful enemy combatant”. If he is given this classification, then the US does not have to charge him or try him.
The US Rewards For Justice programme described Abd al-Hadi as one of bin Laden’s “top global deputies” who remained in contact with his emir. A reward of $1 million (£500,000) was offered for his capture. The reality is that his arrest was of much greater value.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1717580.ece
April 28, 2007
7/7 ‘mastermind’ is seized in Iraq
Sean O’Neill, Tim Reid and Michael Evans
The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.
Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.
Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.
Abd al-Hadi recognised the potential for turning young Muslim radicals from Britain who wanted to become mujahidin in Afghanistan or Iraq into terrorists who could carry out attacks in their home country. He realised that their knowledge of Britain, possession of British passports and natural command of English made them ideal recruits. After al-Qaeda restructured its operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas he sought out young Britons for instruction at training camps. In late 2004 Abd al-Hadi met Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds, at a militant camp in Pakistan and, in the words of a senior investigator, “retasked them” to become suicide bombers.
They were sent back to Britain where they led the terrorist cell that carried out the 7/7 bombings, killing 52 Tube and bus passengers.
Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Hadi was also in contact with Rachid Rauf, a Birmingham man now in prison in Pakistan and alleged to be a key figure in last summer’s alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight.
Abd al-Hadi has also been linked to a number of other foiled al-Qaeda plots to carry out attacks in Britain. But the Security Service, which has previously sent officials to question detainees at Guantanamo Bay, may not have the opportunity to question him directly.
The Government’s recently adopted position in favour of closing Guantanamo Bay is likely to act as a bar on agents travelling there. British Intelligence would have to rely on relaying questions it would like asked by American interrogators.
Security sources said they assessed Abd al-Hadi as a key operational commander, high up the chain in the al-Qaeda structure who was behind many key plots in the UK.
He had a close link with another arrested al-Qaeda figure and, the sources said, would have “a wealth of information”. He is thought to have been in contact with Osama bin Laden before his capture and might be able to provide information about his leader’s whereabouts.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Abd al-Hadi had been classified as a “high-value detainee” at Guantanamo, and joined 14 others, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, as the most senior terror suspects at the Cuba prison.
Mr Whitman refused to say when or where he was captured, or by whom. “Abd al-Hadi was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage al-Qaeda's affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets,” Mr Whitman said.
He added that he was a key al-Qaeda paramilitary leader in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, and between 2002 and 2004 led efforts to attack US forces in Afghanistan with terrorist units based in Pakistan.
In a lecture this week Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, commander of Sctoland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, said that the central al-Qaeda leadership was behind a spate of terror plots against Britain.
He said: “We have seen how al-Qaeda has been able to survive a prolonged multinational assault on its structures, personnel and logistics. It has certainly retained its ability to deliver centrally directed attacks here in the UK. In case after case, the hand of core al-Qaeda can be clearly seen.”
Sources said last night that few figures had been more important at the centre of the revived al-Qaeda. Abd al-Hadi is credited with forming its alliance with the insurgency in Iraq.
US officials said he was associated with leaders of other extremist groups allied with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Taleban.
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, told The Times that catching Abd al-Hadi was important but that it did not spell the end of al-Qaeda.
He said Abd al-Hadi had been an important figure in developing al-Qaeda’s strategy in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and also helped to redirect its terrorist strategy in Europe.
Mr Scheuer, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, said: “It is a blow for al-Qaeda, especially in Iraq, where it will have consequences.
“But al-Qaeda always plans for succession, and there will have been someone lined up to take his place. It is nonsense to think that al-Qaeda is dead.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1717571.ece
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