Osama's Death. Does it mean end of Al-Qaeda? The Potential New Osamas

Viewpoint returns with the list of the potential successors to the once most wanted man in the world, Osama Bin Laden.


2. Abdulla Ahmed Abdullah

Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah, known also as Abu Mohammed al-Masri, was born in 1963 in Egypt. Like many other Islamic militants in Egypt, He fled Egypt in the mid 80s’ and joined other Egyptian fugitives abroad. Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah helped in 1992 Saif al-Adel to provide military and intelligence training to members of Al Qaeda in Sudan and in Somalia to Islamic militants who fought the Americans during operation “Restoring Hope” and the battle on Mogadishu in 1993.

In 1996-98 Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah ran Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, including the al-Farooq camp near Kandahar.

Before the attack on USA embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, on08/07/1998, Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah provided forged passport toMohammed Saddiq Odeh so he could travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan unnoticed. A day before the attack, on 08/06/1998, Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah took a flight, with Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, from Nairobi to Karachi,Pakistan.

Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah is since in the list of USA most wanted list for his involvement in the USA embassies attack and a bounty of $5 was set on his head.

According to unconfirmed intelligence reports Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah and other Al Qaeda personnel, were in Liberia around 2001, buying conflictdiamonds on behalf of Al Qaeda.

It is most likely that after operation Absolute Justice in Afghanistan in 12/2001, Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah managed to flee Afghanistan to Iran, probably with other senior Al Qaeda operatives, such as Saif al-Adel, Suleiman abu Ghaith and Saad Bin Laden, one of Osama Bin Laden’ssons.

A joint Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian intelligence inquiry in April 2006 concluded that Abdullah currently resides in Southeast Iran, under the protection of the Hamze unit of the Revolutionary Guards.

Today (04/2009) the deeds or whereabouts of Abdulla  Ahmed Abdullah are unknown.

  


3.Ayman al-Zawahiri

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an eye surgeon who helped found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group, is expected to replace Osama Bin Laden as the leader of al-Qaeda.

He was already the group's chief ideologue and was believed by some experts to have been the "operational brains" behind the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

Zawahiri was reportedly last seen in the eastern Afghan town of Khost in October 2001, and went into hiding after a US-led coalition overthrew the Taliban.Zawahiri was number two - behind only Bin Laden - in the 22 "most wanted terrorists" list announced by the US government in 2001 and continues to have a $25m bounty on his head.

He was thought to be hiding in the mountainous regions along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with the help of sympathetic local tribes. However, the killing of Bin Laden on 1 May 2011 in Abbottabad, north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, suggests this may not be the case. His wife and children were reportedly killed in a US air strike in late 2001.

Zawahiri was for a time al-Qaeda's most prominent spokesman, appearing in 40 videos and audiotapes since 2003 - most recently in April 2011 - as the group tried to radicalise and recruit Muslims worldwide.

He has also been indicted in the US for his role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa, and was sentenced to death in Egypt in absentia for his activities with Islamic Jihad during the 1990s.

4. 

Abu Yahya al-Libi

Abu Yahya al-Libi, also known as Hasan Qayid and Yunis al-Sahrawi, is thought to have been a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) before he allied himself to Osama Bin Laden.

Libi is believed to have spent five years as a religious student in Mauritania in the 1990s.

He has since emerged as al-Qaeda's leading theologian, and most visible face on video, surpassing Ayman al-Zawahri in recent years.

He claims he was captured by Pakistani forces in 2002 and then sent to the US military airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan, from where he escaped in July 2005 along with three other al-Qaeda members.

Al-Qaeda has named Libi as a field commander in Afghanistan, though he has styled himself in his many videos as a theological scholar, and spoken on a variety of global issues of importance to the group.