• September 1998: Three EIJ members—two of them senior operatives—were deported from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Egypt: Ihab Abdullah Saqr, Isam al-Din Hafiz, and Ahmad Salamah Mabruk. Mabruk is the EIJ’s number-three leader and was captured with “a computer disk listing 100 possible American and Israeli targets,” and which gave the Egyptian government “a map of the stations where … leading members of al Jihad and al Qaeda were deployed.” Saqr is an EIJ explosives expert and was involved in the November 1995 attack on Egypt’s embassy in Pakistan.109
• 1–2 October 1998: Italian police arrested EIJ operative Ahmed Naji after he fled Albania. The Italian press said Naji “masterminded the failed attack on the U.S. embassy in Tirana.”110
• 7 October 1998: Senior bin Laden lieutenant Wadih El-Hage was arrested and indicted in the United States. El-Hage was bin Laden’s personal secretary in Sudan and ran al Qaeda operations in Kenya until September 1997. Among the charges against El-Hage was “providing false passports and other assistance to bin Laden loyalists who are suspected of attacking U.S. and UN forces in Somalia in 1993 and 1994.” El-Hage also was providing false passports to bin Laden operatives traveling to the Caucasus. U.S. authorities reportedly seized computer diskettes from El-Hage’s home in Texas that “held secrets of his [bin Laden’s] front companies and dealings with businessmen.”111
• 25 October 1998: EIJ-bin Laden fighter Salah Muhammad Umar Sa’id was killed in gunfight with Albanian police while resisting arrest. The press claimed Sa’id was part of the bin Laden team responsible for the aborted attack on the U.S. embassy in Tirana.112
• November 1998: South Africa deported three EIJ members to Egypt: Abd al-Munim Mutawaali Abu Sari, Tariq Mursi Wabbah, and Jamal Shuayb. The three had been collecting funds from South Africa’s Muslims and sending the funds to the EIJ in Egypt.113
• December 1998: Kuwait deported to Egypt fifteen bin Laden- and EIJ-related Islamists. Three important EIJ members were in the group: Ahmad Hasan Badi, Majid Fahmi, and Muhammad Faraj. Several of the deportees worked for the Kuwaiti Society for the Revival of the Islamic Heritage. Materials seized from the group showed it sought to overthrow the Kuwaiti regime because it was allied with the United States against Iraq.114
• December 1998: Abdurajik Abubakr Janjalani, leader of the Filipino ASG, was killed in a clash with the Philippine military out-side Isabel, the capital of Basilan Island.115
• 18 January 1999: French police arrested Ahmed Laidouni—age thirty and born in France to Algerian parents—because of his ties to bin Laden. Laidouni was charged with “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise.” Laidouni fought with the Bosnian Muslims from 1992 to 1995 and was trained on weapons and explosives in Afghan camps. He told French authorities that bin Laden brother-in-law Muhammed Jamal Khalifah is still bin Laden’s conduit to “Filipino fighters.”116
• January 1999: Indian police arrested Bangladeshi Sayyid Abu-Nassir and three other men the Indians reported were connected to bin Laden. The Indian authorities claimed the four were planning to bomb the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and the U.S. consulates in Calcutta and Madras.117
• 30 January 1999: Bangladeshi security forces arrested two self-confessed bin Laden operatives: a South African named Ahmed Sadek and a Pakistani named Mohammed Sajid. The two were charged with attacking the country’s leading secular poet, Shamsur Rahman. Security forces also identified five bank accounts used by bin Laden-linked Bangladeshi Islamists to fund religious schools used to recruit militant youths.118
• 8 January 1999: Albanian authorities arrested an ethnic Albanian named Maksi Ciciku for carrying out espionage activities for bin Laden. Ciciku owned a private security company in Tirana that he used, according to the Albanian press, to follow “the movements of the ambassador and the personnel of the U.S. embassy.”119
• March 1999: Mauritanian authorities arrested six people and interrogated twenty others with suspected ties to bin Laden. Many of the individuals were traders and professionals, and the authorities thought they could throw “more light on what is referred to in Nouakchott as a section of the ‘Mauritanian Afghans.’” One of those arrested, Mohamed Yahya Ould Saad, was part of an “underground network.” He was in Afghanistan from 1993 until 1997, “where he is believed to have undergone training at a military camp set up by bin Laden. Others of those arrested also were thought to have spent time in Afghanistan.”120
• 1 March 1999: French authorities arrested French citizen David Courtailler. He was trained in a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan in the 1997–1998 period.121
• October 1999: South African authorities captured Khalfan Khamis Mohammed, a suspected participant in the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Tanzania. Khalfan was turned over to the FBI, indicted, and convicted.122
• October 1999: Yemeni authorities execute Abyan Islamic Army leader Zayn-al-Abidin al-Muhdar for the December 1998 kidnapping and murder of three U.K. and one Australian tourists. Al-Muhdar staged the kidnappings in bin Laden’s name.123
• 12 November 1999: Albania deported a dual Albanian-Jordanian citizen named Abdul Latif Salah because it believed he was an EIJ member and “a man close to arch-terrorist bin Laden.” Salah had lived in Tirana since 1992 and had ingratiated himself with all Albanian political parties. He worked with a variety of Islamic nongovernmental organizations and helped build the EIJ network in Albania. Salah had accumulated substantial wealth through construction and other businesses.124
• 5 December 1999–3 January 2000: Actions by security services and plain bad luck aborted bin Laden’s plan for multiple anti-U.S. attacks in what came to be known as the “Millennium Plot.” Jordanian authorities arrested thirteen bin Laden operatives in Jordan—eleven Jordanians, an Iraqi, and an Algerian—who were preparing to attack hotels in Amman and Christian holy sites along the Jordan River during the New Year’s period. The Islamists had been smuggling explosives into Jordan since at least early 1998. On 18 December Pakistan arrested and sent to Jordan a dual Jordanian-U.S. citizen named Khalil al-Deeq, who was controlling the group arrested in Jordan from his base in Peshawar. Al-Deeq had been a U.S. serviceman and previously was convicted and jailed for his role in a 1993 series of bombings in Jordan that were financed by bin Laden and Mohammed Jamal Khalifah. On 14 December U.S. Customs in Washington State arrested Algerian national Ahmed Ressam for smuggling explosives from Canada to the United States. Ressam was trained in one of bin Laden’s Afghan camps, and was carrying a forged Canadian passport, fifty-four kilograms of nitroglycerin, and a number of “advanced detonators.” Ressam and his associates in Canada are members of Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group, but the Wall Street Journal quoted U.S. authorities as saying that Ressam and his colleagues may have been working for al Qaeda. On 3 January 2000, a boat laden with explosives sank before it could be detonated next to the U.S. destroyer The Sullivans, then refueling in Aden, Yemen.125
• March 2000: After raiding an Auckland home, New Zealand police arrested several Afghan refugees who had in their possession “a map of Sydney [Australia] with the nuclear reactor and its entry and exit points highlighted.” The police also found “a virtual command center, complete with conference table and maps, and entries in a notebook outlining police security tactics, standards, and chains of command for the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990.” The media reported the Afghans were tied to bin Laden and planned to attack the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney during the 2000 Summer Olympics. The police also found that the Afghans were trafficking narcotics, smuggling aliens, and dealing in counterfeit passports and money.126
• June–August 2000: Israeli and Palestinian security services arrested twenty-three Islamists, some of whom the services claimed were linked to bin Laden. The services also seized six kilograms of TNT, some C-4 explosive, and remote control equipment. Israel claimed a Palestinian named Nabil Okal was the group’s leader and that he was trained in bin Laden’s Afghan camps and funded by HAMAS’s (Islamic Resistance Movement
) Shaykh Yasin. HAMAS rejected the latter allegation.127
• 7–29 July 2000: On 7 July Canadian police arrested Muhammed Mahjub, a senior leader of the Vanguards of Conquest, an EIJ faction. Mahjub was arrested because of his links to Egyptian Islamists and bin Laden. On 29 August Pakistani security officials arrested Abdel Rahman al-Kanadi for his role in the EIJ’s 1995 bombing of Egypt’s embassy in Pakistan. When arrested, al-Kanadi carried a Canadian passport and was chief of the nongovernmental organization Human Concern International’s office in Peshawar. Mahjub and al-Kanadi are being held pending possible extradition to Egypt.128
• 18 September 2000: Jordan’s security court convicted twenty-eight Islamists charged in the aborted December 1999 attacks on Jewish and Christian targets in Jordan. Six of the Islamists were acquitted, sixteen got fifteen-year sentences, and six were sentenced to death; four of the latter are at large. Of the twenty-eight men, twelve were tried in absentia.129
• 31 October–6 November 2000: Kuwaiti authorities arrested eleven Islamists on terrorism-related charges; two were Kuwaitis and officers in Kuwait’s security services. Also seized were 133 kilograms of explosives, 5 hand grenades, and 1,450 detonators. The authorities said the group was tied to bin Laden and EIJ leader Zawahiri and was planning to use explosive-laden vehicles to attack U.S. military convoys in Kuwait. The group also was planning attacks on a U.S. military base in Kuwait and on individual Western personnel in their vehicles and residences.130
• November 2000: Yemeni authorities stopped an attack on a convoy carrying U.S. soldiers who were assisting in mine-clearing operations. The arrested men are reported to be associated with bin Laden and had details of the routes the convoy used.131
• 26 December 2000–4 April 2001: On 26 December German authorities raided a Frankfurt home and arrested four Algerian Islamists police say were connected to bin Laden. Also seized was $14,000 in cash, forged passports, computers and encrypted computer discs, rifles with telescopic sights, a machine gun, pistols with silencers, and “large quantities of chemicals for the production of explosives.” The police also recovered a twelve-minute video of the Christmas fair in Strasbourg, France, which they speculated was a surveillance film of the group’s target. In April 2001 Italian authorities used information seized in Frankfurt to arrest five bin Laden-associated Islamists near Milan, while the German police simultaneously arrested another Islamist in Bavaria. Bavaria’s interior minister said the Islamist and those arrested earlier in Frankfurt were also tied to senior bin Laden lieutenant Abu Hajir, who had been arrested in Bavaria in September 1998 and extradited to the United States. The group arrested in April was reported to have been targeting the U.S. embassy in Rome and the 2001 G-8 Economic Summit in Genoa.132
• April 2001: On 7 April a U.S. court convicted Algerian Ahmed Ressam on terrorism charges, sentencing him to 130 years in prison. Ressam was arrested in December 1999 for smuggling explosives into the United States from Canada. Ressam was reported to have been part of bin Laden’s plans for simultaneous New Year’s attacks in Yemen, Jordan, and the United States. Earlier, in late March, Algerian authorities arrested Abdelmajid Dahoumane, who U.S. officials identified as Ressam’s right-hand man. Dahoumane received explosives training in Afghanistan, and in the early 1990s he managed the office of the Islamic nongovernmental organization Al-Kifah in Zagreb, Croatia. Dahoumane will stand trial in Algeria.133
• 29 May 2001: Four al Qaeda fighters—Wadiha el-Hage, Mohammed Sadiq Odeh, Rashed Daoud al-Owali, and Khaffan Khamis Mohammed—were convicted in a U.S. court in New York of participating in the conspiracy that destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. Each will be imprisoned for life.134
• 11 September 2001: Nineteen al Qaeda fighters perished in the group’s attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
• 9–24 December 2001: Singaporean authorities arrested fifteen members of a group called Jemmah Islamiyah. The authorities captured documents linking the group to al Qaeda and recovered forged documents, training manuals, and casing reports—some with video—of targets in Singapore, including the U.S. and Israeli embassies, U.S. business interests, and naval installations used by ships of the U.S. Navy. The Jemmah Islamiyah’s aim was to establish an organization in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and like its Islamist counterparts elsewhere, its members “were mostly educated, productive members of society.”135
• 20 December 2001: Senior Vanguards of Conquest leader and Zawahiri associate Ahmad Husayn Agizah was returned to Egypt by the Swedish government. Agizah faces a life sentence he received when tried in absentia in the “Returnees from Albania” trial.136
• 22 December 2001: Passengers aboard an American Airlines Paris–Miami flight subdued al Qaeda fighter Richard C. Reid before he could detonate explosives concealed in the heels of his shoes. The airliner was diverted to Boston, where the FBI later told a U.S. court that Reid had enough explosives in his shoes to puncture the fuselage of the aircraft and perhaps to have made it crash.137
• Since 7 October 2001: As a result of U.S.-led military attacks on Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban have lost their freedom of movement in Afghanistan and much military material. They have suffered several thousand deaths among their forces, and U.S. forces have detained about five hundred fighters. While difficult to gauge, al Qaeda’s ability to attack U.S. targets outside Afghanistan appears relatively unimpaired, as only three important bin Laden lieutenants have been reported killed or captured: Mohammed Atef was killed in November 2001; Ibn-al-Shaykh al-Libi was captured in December 2001; and Abu Zubaydah was captured in March 2002. At least two senior EIJ leaders have also been killed. Anwar al-Sayyed Ahmad and Muhammed Salah—both members of the EIJ leadership council—were killed in Khowst in October 2001.138
• 9–24 December 2001: Singaporean police broke up a JI cell and arrested fifteen Islamists, fourteen Singaporeans, and one Malaysian. Thirteen of fifteen were JI members, and eight of those received physical and religious training in Malaysia and military training in Afghanistan. The cell was formed in 1997 and had planned six truck-bomb attacks against U.S., UK, Israeli, and Australian diplomatic and military targets, as well as against U.S.-owned businesses.
• 14 December 2001: U.S. Marines entered the Qandahar airport to establish the U.S.-led coalition’s control of the Taliban’s capital. The action ended the Afghan war’s first battle, one that evicted the Taliban and al Qaeda from Afghan cities.
• 20–21 December 2001: Egyptian Islamic Jihad faction leaders Ahmad Husayn Aghiza and Mohammed Sulayman al-Dharri were extradited from Sweden to Egypt. Aghiza took part in the 1995 bombing of Egypt’s embassy in Pakistan.
• 19 March 2002: Ibn al-Khattab, leader of the Arab Afghans fighting in Chechnya, was killed by a letter contaminated with poison. The letter was made by Russian authorities and delivered to al-Khattab by a Chechen suborned by them. Al-Khattab also had fought in Tajik and Afghan jihads and was a folk hero among Islamists. A Saudi national, his true name was Salim Suwaylin.
• 28 March 2002: Al Qaeda ally Abu Zubaydah was captured in Faisalbad, Pakistan. A thirty-year-old Palestinian with Saudi citizenship, Zubaydah was a chief recruiter and ran an Afghan training camp. He was under a Jordanian death sentence for his part in al Qaeda’s millennium plot to attack U.S. and Israeli targets.
• Late May 2002: Moroccan security arrested five al Qaeda fighters of Saudi nationality in Rabat and Casablanca for planning attacks on U.S. and UK warships in the Straits of Gibraltar. The Saudis had come to Morocco from Afghanistan after transiting Iran and Syria.
• 10 September 2002: Ramzi bin al-Shibh was arrested in Karachi. He was to be a pilot in the 11 September attacks but failed to get a U.S. visa.
• 12 September 2002: Al Qaeda’s chief for northern and western Africa, a thirty-seven-year-old Yemeni named Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan, was killed by Algerian police in eastern Algeria. Alwan was al Qaeda’s lia
ison to GSPC.
• 13–15 September 2002: The FBI arrested seven Yemen-born men in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, saying they were an al Qaeda “sleeper cell” and had received religious training in Pakistan and military training in Afghanistan.
• Late October 2002: United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities arrested al Qaeda’s Persian Gulf operations chief, Abdel-Rahim al-Nashiri. A Yemen-born Saudi citizen, al-Nashiri was charged with planning to destroy “vital economic targets” in the UAE. He also helped plan attacks on U.S. and UK warships in the Straits of Gibraltar, and ships of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Al-Nashiri was an explosives specialist, fought in Afghanistan with bin Laden, and fought in Bosnia. He took part in al Qaeda’s 1998 East Africa attacks, the attacks on the U.S. destroyers The Sullivans and Cole, and the attack on the French super tanker Limburg.
• 3 November 2002: CIA’s unmanned “Predator” aircraft destroyed a vehicle, killing six al Qaeda members. Among the dead were al Qaeda’s chief in Yemen, al-Qaed Sinan al-Harithi, and U.S.-citizen/ al Qaeda member Ahmed Hijazi. Afterward al Qaeda deputy leader al-Zawahiri said: “When Abu al-Harithi was killed by U.S. missiles in Yemen, it was a warning to us that the Israeli method of killing the mujahideen in Palestine has come to the Arab world.”139
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