Ayman al-Zawahiri Named New Al-Qaeda Chief

Al-Qaeda has named Ayman al-Zawahiri as its new chief following the killing of long-time leader Osama bin Laden by US commandos in May 2 raid in Pakistan, the jihadists said in a statement today.

"The general command of Al-Qaeda announces, after consultations, the appointment of Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri as head of the group," said the statement, issued in the name of the general command and posted on an Islamist website.

Zawahiri has been Al-Qaeda's number two for years.

(Source PTI)

Targets In Yemen Hit By American Drones

United States is worried that a regime which is struggling for its own survival will not be able to help them in ant-terror operations. Thus to stop the militants from occupying this power vacumn in the south of Yemen , US government has stepped up its drone attacks in this area.

Reports coming form Yemen indicate that not only drones but fighter jets were used in what looks like a major operation.It is very important for the Americans that these militants are restricted in the south of the country.

Earlier Wednesday, Admiral Michael Mullen, the top US uniformed commander, said the conflict in the Arabian Peninsula country was making the Al-Qaeda terror network more "dangerous."
Al-Qaeda in Yemen "has grown into a very virulent deadly federated point in the Al-Qaeda organisation," the head of the US joint chiefs of staff said in Cairo."It is incredibly dangerous and made more dangerous in the ongoing chaos."

The most recent attack was on Friday when US Air-jets killed alleged Al-Qaeda member Ali Al-Harithi and others while also claiming the lives of four civilians. Although the strike was a US lead attack there had been ongoing clashes on the ground between the state security and Islamists in Zunjubar the capital of Abyan. According to locals the clashes have made regular life impossible in the town and forced many to hide. A few weeks ago a similar US lead attack was launched attempting to kill AQAP leader Anwar Al-Awlaqi who is said to be hiding in Shabwa governorate neighboring Abyan but has failed.

Before this American attacked on the 6th of May with drone aircraft a car carrying a group of suspected militants, including an American citizen, who were believed to have Qaeda ties. The attack was part of a clandestine Pentagon program to hunt members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group believed responsible for a number of failed attempts to strike the United States, including the thwarted plot to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet on Dec. 25, 2009, as it was preparing to land in Detroit. Some intelligence sources tell us that these attacks was meant to liquidate Anwar al-Awlaki.

Although Al-Awlaqi is not one of the top Al-Qaeda leader yet he has been made a target due to his success in recruiting English speaking Yemeni nationals for suicide missions and due to his very popular radio and internet broadcasts. Which are even popular in Muslims of Europe as well as the world. It is to be noted that this man is an American citizen yet US government has decided to kill him.

Intelligence sources further say that American troops present in Yemen are commandos from Special Operation Group and they have been given the lead role in these operations. Troops are not only helped by electronic intelligence, they are guided by CIA operatives present in the country. For the past few years even the US navy has attacked targets inside Yemen using cruise missiles or marine jets flying from their aircraft carrier.

On Tuesday the Yemeni defense ministry announced that 30 members of Al-Qaeda have been killed through military raids.Ironically it was the same defense ministry that allowed the Islamists to have a strong foot hold in the area especially when it recalled its men leaving the town security free and vulnerable to armed groups.

Saleh, who has ruled the country for 33 years, has been a key US ally on the "war on terror.". These fresh attacks come after one year. The May 5th strike was the first known attack in the country by the American military for nearly a year. Last May, American missiles mistakenly killed a provincial government leader, and the Pentagon strikes were put on hold.

According to the newspaper, Saleh had authorized American missions in Yemen in 2009, but has said publicly that all military operations were conducted by Yemeni troops.

Death Of Bin Laden Finally Avenged The Death Of Two CIA Operatives

By MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN

For a small cadre of CIA veterans, the death of Osama bin Laden was more than just a national moment of relief and closure. It was also a measure of payback, a settling of a score for a pair of deaths, the details of which have remained a secret for 13 years.

Tom Shah and Molly Huckaby Hardy were among the 44 U.S. Embassy employees killed when a truck bomb exploded outside the embassy compound in Kenya in 1998.

Though it has never been publicly acknowledged, the two were working undercover for the CIA. In al-Qaida's war on the United States, they are believed to be the first CIA casualties.

Their names probably will not be among those read at Memorial Day memorials around the country this weekend. Like many CIA officers, their service remained a secret in both life and death, marked only by anonymous stars on the wall at CIA headquarters and blank entries in its book of honor.

Their CIA ties were described to The Associated Press by a half-dozen current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because Shah's and Hardy's jobs are still secret, even now.

The deaths weighed heavily on many at the CIA, particularly the two senior officers who were running operations in Africa during the attack. Over the past decade, as the CIA waged war against al-Qaida, those officers have taken on central roles in counterterrorism. Both were deeply involved in hunting down bin Laden and planning the raid on the terrorist who killed their colleagues.

"History has shown that tyrants who threaten global peace and freedom must eventually face their natural enemies: America's war fighters, and the silent warriors of our Intelligence Community," CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a Memorial Day message to agency employees.

These silent warriors took very different paths to Nairobi.

Hardy was a divorced mom from Valdosta, Ga., who raised a daughter as she travelled to Asia, South America and Africa over a lengthy career. At the CIA station in Kenya, she handled the office finances, including the CIA's stash of money used to pay sources and carry out spying operations. She was a new grandmother and was eager to get back home when al-Qaida struck.

Shah took an unpredictable route to the nation's clandestine service. He was not a solider or a Marine, a linguist or an Ivy Leaguer. He was a musician from the Midwest. But his story, and the secret mission that brought him to Africa, was straight out of a Hollywood spy movie.

"He was a vivacious, upbeat guy who had a very poignant, self-deprecating sense of humor," said Dan McDevitt, a classmate and close friend from St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, where Shah was a standout trumpet player.

Shah - his given name was Uttamlal - was the only child of an Indian immigrant father and an American mother, McDevitt said. He had a fascination with international affairs. He participated in the school's model United Nations and, in the midst of the Cold War, was one of the school's first students to learn Russian. From time to time, he went to India with his father, giving him a rare world perspective.

"At the time, that was unheard of. You might as well have gone to Mars," said McDevitt, who lost touch with his high school friend long before he joined the agency.

Shah graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and Ball State University's music school. He taught music classes and occasionally played in backup bands for entertainers Red Skelton, Perry Como and Jim Nabors. His doctoral thesis at Indiana's Ball State offered no hints about the career he would pursue: "The Solo Songs of Edward MacDowell: An Examination of Style and Literary Influence."

"He was one of our outstanding people," said Kirby Koriath, the graduate student adviser at Ball State.

Shah and his wife, Linda, were married in 1983, the year he received his master's degree. In 1987, after earning his doctorate, Shah joined the U.S. government. On paper, he had become a diplomat. In reality, he was shipped to the Farm, the CIA's spy school in Virginia.

He received the usual battery of training in surveillance, counterespionage and the art of building sources. The latter is particularly hard to teach, but it came naturally to Shah, former officials said. Shah was regarded as one of the top members of his class and was assigned to the Near East Division, which covers the Middle East.

He spoke fluent Hindi and decent Russian when he arrived and quickly showed a knack for languages by learning Arabic. He worked in Cairo and Damascus and, though he was young, former colleagues said he was quickly proving himself one of the agency's most promising stars.

In 1997, he was dispatched to headquarters as part of the Iraq Operations Group, the CIA team that ran spying campaigns against Saddam Hussein's regime. Around that time, the CIA became convinced that a senior Iraqi official was willing to provide intelligence in exchange for a new life in America. Before the U.S. could make that deal, it had to be sure the information was credible and the would-be defector wasn't really a double agent. But even talking to him was a risky move. If a meeting with the CIA was discovered, the Iraqi would be killed for sure.

Somebody had to meet with the informant, somebody who knew the Middle East and could be trusted with such a sensitive mission. A senior officer recommended Shah.

The meetings were set up in Kenya, former officials said, because it was considered relatively safe from Middle East intelligence services. It was perhaps the most important operation being run under the Africa Division at the time, current and former officials said. Among the agency managers overseeing it was John Bennett, the deputy chief of the division. He and his operations chief, who remains undercover, were seasoned Africa hands and veterans of countless spying operations.

Because of the mission's sensitivity, Shah bottled up his normally outgoing and friendly personality while at the embassy.

"This is the glory and the tragedy of discreet work," said Prudence Bushnell, the former ambassador to Kenya. "You keep a very low profile and you don't do things that make you memorable."

Officials say Shah was among those who went to the window when shooting began outside the embassy gates. Most who did were killed when the massive bomb exploded. He was 38. Hardy was also killed in the blast. She was 51.

The U.S. government said both victims were State Department employees. But like all fallen officers, they received private memorial services at CIA headquarters. Every year, their names are among those read at a ceremony for family members and colleagues.

Hardy's daughter, Brandi Plants, said she did not want to discuss her mother's employment. Shah's widow, Linda, sent word through a neighbor that the topic was still too painful to discuss.

Shah's death did not stall his mission. The Africa Division pressed on and confirmed that the Iraqi source was legitimate, his information extremely valuable. He defected and was re-located to the United States with a new identity.

Bennett later went on to be the station chief in Islamabad, where he ran the agency's effort to kill al-Qaida members by using unmanned aircraft. He now sits in one of the most important seats in the agency, overseeing clandestine operations worldwide. His former Africa operations chief now runs the agency's counterterrorism center. Both have been hunting for bin Laden for years. Both were directly involved in the raid.

Shah and Hardy are among the names etched into stone at a memorial at the embassy in Nairobi, with no mention of their CIA service. Shah is also commemorated with a plaque in a CIA conference room at its headquarters. Both were among those whose names Panetta read last week at the annual ceremony for fallen officers.

"Throughout the effort to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida, our fallen colleagues have been with us in memory and in spirit," Panetta said. "With their strength and determination as our guide, we achieved a great victory three weeks ago."

Bin Laden said the embassy in Nairobi was targeted because it was a major CIA station. He died never knowing that he had killed two CIA officers there.

Egyptian Saif Al-Adel Acting Leader Of Al Qaeda

An Egyptian who was once a Special Forces officer has been chosen "caretaker" leader of al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the group's inner workings.

Al Qaeda's interim leader is Saif al-Adel, who has long played a prominent role in the group, according to Noman Benotman. Benotman has known the al Qaeda leadership for more than two decades. He was once a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant organization that used to be aligned with al Qaeda, but in recent years renounced al Qaeda's ideology.

Benotman said that based on his personal communications with militants and discussions on jihadist forums, al-Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, had been chosen interim chief of al Qaeda because the global jihadist community had grown restive in recent days about the lack of a formal announcement of a successor to bin Laden.

According to Benotman, this was not a decision of the formal shura council of al Qaeda, because it is currently impossible to gather them in one place, but was rather the decision of six to eight leaders of al Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Al-Adel was already one of the top leaders of the group.

However, Benotman said, the choice of an Egyptian may not sit well with some Saudi and Yemeni members of al Qaeda, who believe bin Laden's successor should come from the Arabian Peninsula, a region that is holy to all Muslims. Bin Laden was from a wealthy Saudi family.

The presumed successor to bin Laden is his long-time deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is also Egyptian. Benotman, who has long been a reliable source of information about al Qaeda, said the temporary appointment of al-Adel may be a way for the leadership to gauge reaction to the selection of someone from beyond the Arabian Peninsula as the group's leader.

Al-Adel fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. After the fall of the Taliban in the winter of 2001 he fled to Iran. According to senior Saudi counterterrorism officials, from there al-Adel authorized al Qaeda's branch in Saudi Arabia to begin a campaign of terrorist attacks in the Saudi kingdom that began in Riyadh in May 2003, a campaign that killed scores.Some reports in the past year have suggested that al-Adel had left Iran for Pakistan.

One of the key issues that al-Adel has to reckon with now is the fallout from the large quantities of sensitive information that was recovered by U.S. forces at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was shot on May 2. That information is likely to prove damaging to al Qaeda operations.

The selection of an interim leader allows al Qaeda to begin the process of collecting allegiance, or baya, from al-Qaeda affiliates such as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the North Africa-based al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Baya was a religious oath of allegiance to bin Laden rather than to the organization itself, in the same way that Nazi Party members swore an oath of fealty to Hitler rather than to Nazism. That baya must now be transferred to whomever the new leader of al Qaeda is going to be, which is likely to be al-Zawahiri, given his long role as bin Laden's deputy.

However, there is scant evidence that al-Zawahiri has the charisma of bin Laden, nor that he commands the respect bordering on love that was accorded to bin Laden by members of Al Qaeda.

Now that bin Laden is dead there is a real opportunity for the Taliban to disassociate itself from al Qaeda, as it was bin Laden who, sometime before the 9/11 attacks, swore an oath of allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the Amir al-Muminin, "commander of the faithful," a rarely invoked religious title that dates from around the time of the Prophet Mohammed.Mullah Omar could now take the position that the new leader of Al Qaeda does not need to swear an oath of allegiance to Omar as commander of the faithful.

Such a move would satisfy a key condition for peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan governments: that the Taliban reject al Qaeda, something that they have so far not done. Al-Adel has been involved in militant activities since the late 1980s, according to an interview with him published in spring 2005 in the Arabic-language London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi. In the article, written by Fuad Husayn, a Jordanian journalist and writer, Al-Adel recalled that he was detained for militant activities in Egypt on May 6, 1987. "The case pertained to the assassination attempt against ex-Egyptian Interior Minister Hasan Abu-Basha. ... I was then a colonel in the Egyptian Special Forces," he said.

Al-Adel also has been involved for years in anti-American activities, other sources indicate. Mohamed Odeh, one of the bombers of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in August 1998, told FBI interrogators that in 1993 he was ordered by al-Adel to go to Somalia to link up with local tribes and train them to fight and attack U.S. forces who were then serving there in a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somalis.

And a British-Ugandan, Feroz Ali Abbasi, who had trained in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11, recalled in a memoir that Adel instructed him and other recruits to fight U.S. forces around Kabul or in the southern city of Kandahar during the American invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001

In the interview published in Al-Quds al-Arabi, al-Adel also explained al Qaeda's motivations for the 9/11 attack: "Our main objective, therefore, was to deal a strike to the head of the snake at home to smash its arrogance."

After the fall of the Taliban, Adel recalled that he and other members of al-Qaeda found refuge in Iran: "We began to converge on Iran one after the other," he said. "...We began to rent apartments for the fraternal brothers and some of their families. The fraternal brothers of the group of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar" -- an Afghan militant then living in exile in Iran who is now a leader of the insurgency in Afghanistan -- "offered us satisfactory help in this field. They provided us with apartments and some farms that they owned."

But Al-Adel said that the Iranians subsequently arrested a large number of these "brothers."

17 Al Qaeda linked militants die in attempted Iraq prison break

The man accused of masterminding an attack on a Baghdad church last year wrestled a gun from a guard at a detention facility, freed his comrades and launched an hours-long assault that ended with 17 people dead, including a top counterterrorism officer, officials and witnesses said. Abu Huthaifa al-Battawi, the man accused by authorities of plotting the October attack on an Iraqi church killing 68 people, nearly drove out of Baghdad's Ministry of Interior with fellow inmates before being gunned down by guards. The melee at the sprawling compound raises questions about how a group of prisoners at what is supposed to be one of the most secure facilities in the country managed to launch such a fierce attack.

The detainees, all accused of belonging to Al Qaeda in Iraq, were being moved from a detention room to an interrogation room at the ministry grounds in eastern Baghdad when one of the detainees attacked a guard and wrestled away his weapon, said Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the top military spokesman in Baghdad.
Two interior ministry officials said it was al-Battawi who launched the attack. One official said al-Battawi's hands had just been untied for his interrogation when he grabbed the weapon.
The detainee killed the guard, moved into one of the rooms and killed another guard and took his weapon, al-Moussawi said. In all, the detainees managed to seize four weapons including an assault rifle.
An Iraqi lawmaker on the security and defense committee, Hakim al-Zamili, said they also managed to get their hands on grenades.

The prisoners then entered the office of Brigadier Muaeid Mohammed Saleh, the head of a department responsible for combating terrorism and organized crime in eastern Baghdad, and shot him along with another officer who was in the room.
"I was in the next room close to Brigadier Muaeid's room and I heard shots fired and screams in the corridor. I opened the door and saw about four Al Qaeda detainees moving around and I closed the door back immediately," said Saleh's bodyguard, Jawad Kadhum.
"Then I heard one of them saying 'This is the director's room,' and I heard a flurry of gunshots," he said.
Al-Moussawi said the assault by the prisoners was not spontaneous but appeared to have been plotted ahead of time. He said six police and 11 detainees were killed in the ensuing melee which lasted for nearly three hours before Iraqi security forces brought the situation under control.

A group of the detainees, including al-Battawi, managed to seize a car and were driving toward the gate of the compound when a guard opened killed them with a machine gun, al-Zamili said.
Al-Moussawi said the detainees were not shackled at the time, which is normal procedure except that since they were accused of being involved in Al Qaida, they should have been restrained.
"I blame the security measures in this case because they were senior terrorists," he said. "Tight security measures should have been taken."
An Interior Ministry official on the scene said the guards violated procedure by keeping their weapons with them when moving the prisoners. Usually when prisoners are taken into the investigation room their restraints are removed but guards are not supposed to have their weapons on them at the time.

The official said about 20 to 25 prisoners were involved in the melee.
An additional eight police officers and six detainees were wounded, security and hospital officials said.
The injured detainees were brought to Baghdad's al-Kindi hospital under tight security, treated and then taken away again by security officials to an unidentified location, officials said.
All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
It is the latest embarrassing incident for Iraq related to its detention facilities.
In January, 12 inmates, many believed to have links to Al Qaeda in Iraq, were awaiting trial in a temporary detention centre in the southern city of Basra when they obtained uniforms and walked out in disguise. They scattered after that to avoid the massive manhunt. At least two were later picked up by security officials in northern Iraq.

Sunday's prison attack immediately led to cries of outrage over how such an incident could have happened. "The Interior Ministry lets large number of dangerous terrorist leaders gather in one cell without any means of surveillance such as cameras and this makes them free to plot and even give orders to people outside to carry out attacks through mobiles smuggled to them in the prison," al-Zamili said.