The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [258]
My final thanks go to the heroes of the country who are today still on the front lines—across the military, FBI, CIA, NCIS, and other agencies—and who every day put their lives on the line for us. Thank you.
Principal Characters
Nasir Abbas: A commander of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah who opposed the efforts of Hambali to tie the group to al-Qaeda. He later left the group, and I spoke to him in 2010 in Indonesia.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (aliases: Saleh, [1 word redacted], and Abu Mohammed al-Masri): Headed al-Qaeda’s East African cells following the death of Abu Ubaidah on May 21, 1996, and was indicted for his role in planning the 1998 East African embassy bombings. He is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.
Abu Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir (alias of Muhsin Musa Matwakku Atwah): Al-Qaeda’s explosives expert and master bomb maker; indicted for the 1998 East African embassy bombings. He was reported by Pakistani officials to have been killed in 2006 by an airstrike in North Waziristan, a claim confirmed by U.S. officials through DNA testing.
Abu Bakar Bashir: Cofounded the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah with Abdullah Sungkar, and after Sungkar’s death in 1999 he took over the group. He supported Hambali’s relationship with al-Qaeda.
Abu Hafs al-Mauritani (alias of Mahfouz Ould al-Walid): Shura council member and the only person in al-Qaeda with religious training; headed the fatwa committee following the arrest of Abu Hajer al-Iraqi. Reports occasionally surface that he has been killed, but they have never been confirmed, and some analysts believe he is living in Iran.
Abu Hafs al-Masri: (alias of Mohammed Atef): Al-Qaeda’s military commander after the death of Abu Ubaidah in 1996. He was eventually killed in November 2001 by a U.S. airstrike on his hiding place; in the rubble of the house we found important evidence that became part of the DocEx program.
Abu Hajer al-Iraqi (alias of Mamdouh Mahmoud Salem): Kurd who fought in Saddam’s army and then alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan, where the two became close friends. Although he wasn’t a cleric, he memorized the Quran, and bin Laden appointed him head of al-Qaeda’s fatwa committee. From that perch he wrote justifications for al-Qaeda’s actions, including the killing of innocent civilians. He was arrested in Germany in September 1998 and extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced for participating in the 1998 East African embassy bombings.
Abu Jandal (literally, “father of death”; alias of Nasser Ahmad Nasser al-Bahri): Member of the Northern Group who was recruited to al-Qaeda in 1996 with the help of Muhannad bin Attash; rose within the organization to become bin Laden’s personal bodyguard. He is the brother-in-law of Salim Hamdan, who served as bin Laden’s driver and confidant; it was the al-Qaeda leader who encouraged the two to marry sisters. Abu Jandal had been arrested by the Yemeni authorities after the October 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole, but they only let us question him after 9/11, when another al-Qaeda operative, Fahd al-Quso, linked him to one of the 9/11 hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi. NCIS Special Agent Robert McFadden and I interrogated him, and he identified many of the 9/11 hijackers and provided invaluable intelligence on al-Qaeda’s structure, operatives, and operations. To date that interrogation is viewed as the most successful in the war against al-Qaeda. Today he is free in Yemen.
Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri (alias of Amin Ali al-Rashidi): A member of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad before joining al-Qaeda, he was bin Laden’s first deputy and