Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was a Libyan national captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the fall of the Taliban; he was interrogated by the American and Egyptian forces. The information he gave under torture to Egyptian authorities was cited by the George W. Bush Administration in the months preceding its 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That information was frequently repeated by members of the Bush Administration, although reports from both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) strongly questioned its credibility, suggesting that al-Libi was "intentionally misleading" interrogators.
Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, also known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, the Hook Hand or simply Abu Hamza, is an Egyptian cleric who was the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, England, where he preached Islamic fundamentalism and militant Islamism.
Abdurahman Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was held as an enemy combatant in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, after being detained in 2002 in Afghanistan under suspicion of connections to Al-Qaeda. He later claimed to have been an informant for the CIA. The agency declined to comment on this when asked for confirmation by the United States' PBS news program Frontline. He was released in the fall of 2003 and ultimately returned to Canada.
Saif al-Adel is an Egyptian former military colonel, explosives expert, and a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda who is still at large. Adel is under indictment by the United States for his part in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya.
Ahmed Said Khadr was a Canadian citizen who began working in Afghanistan in the 1980s. There he has been described as having had ties to a number of militant and Mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda. Khadr was accused by Canada and the United States of being a "senior associate" and financier of al-Qaeda.
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam also known as the Father of Global Jihad was a Palestinian Sunni Islamic scholar and theologian and founding member of al-Qaeda. Azzam preached both defensive and offensive jihad by Muslims to help the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet invaders.
Abdullah Ahmed Khadr is a Canadian citizen who is the oldest son of the late Ahmed Khadr, alleged to be a terrorist and al-Qaeda member. Khadr has admitted buying weapons for al-Qaeda, but maintains that he was on friendly terms with its leaders due to his father's prominence in Pakistan and Afghanistan and was not a member.
Abu Musab al-Suri, born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, is a suspected Al-Qaeda member and writer best known for his 1600-page book The Global Islamic Resistance Call. He has held Spanish citizenship since the late 1980s following marriage to a Spanish woman. He is wanted in Spain for the 1985 El Descanso bombing, which killed eighteen people in a restaurant in Madrid, and in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. He is considered by many as 'the most articulate exponent of the modern jihad and its most sophisticated strategies'.
The Khalden training camp was one of the oldest and most well-known military training camps in Afghanistan. It was located in the mountains of eastern Paktia Province, near to Tora Bora.
Omar Nasiri is the pseudonym of a Belgian spy of Moroccan origin who infiltrated al-Qaeda, attending training camps in Afghanistan and passing information to the UK and French external intelligence services, the DGSE. He claims in an exclusive interview presented on the BBC's Newsnight programme on 16 November 2006 that the UK intelligence services were warned in the mid-1990s about the threat posed by al-Qaeda, but failed to act quickly enough. He also claims that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi deliberately gave interrogators acting on behalf of the United States false information in order to encourage the USA to overthrow Saddam Hussein, thus allowing al-Qaeda to use Iraq as a jihadist base.
Mohamed Moumou was a Moroccan-born Swedish national who was reportedly the No. 2 leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and the senior leader in Northern Iraq. He died in a building in Mosul during a shootout with American troops.
Abou Abderahmane Amine, born Abou hadj Arab Amine Zitouni, was the leader of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (1994–1996), a terrorist group responsible for carrying out a series of bombings in France in 1995. He was killed by a rival faction on July 16, 1996.
Yusuf al-Ayeri or Yusuf bin Salih bin Fahd al-Ayeri was a Saudi Arabian member of Al-Qaeda, and the first-ever leader of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.
Ali Ammar Ashur al-Rufayi, known as Abu Laith al-Libi, was a senior leader of the al-Qaeda movement in Afghanistan who appeared in several al-Qaeda videos. He was believed to have been active in the tribal regions of Waziristan. He also served as an al Qaeda spokesman. According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, he was an "expert in guerilla warfare."
Abu Yahya al-Libi, born Mohamed Hassan Qaid, was a terrorist and leading high-ranking official within al-Qaeda, and an alleged member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Carried out by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the 19 November 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Punjab, Pakistan was retaliation against the diplomatic staffers who were accused of gathering intelligence on Jihad factions inside Pakistan. It was the deadliest attack against the Egyptian government, since it had been declared apostate three years earlier by Islamic militants.
Amr Mohamed Hamed was a Canadian who died in the American bombing of an Afghan training camp on August 20, 1998, as retaliation for the African embassy bombings.
Mustafa Hamid, also known as Abu Walid al-Masri and Hashim al-Makki, is a journalist who in the 1980s fought as an Islamic jihad volunteer during the Soviet–Afghan War. He is reported to have been an al-Qaeda advisor and taught at the Al Farouq training camp in the 1990s. He served as a bureau chief in Afghanistan for Al Jazeera from 1998–2001, before leaving for Iran.
Since the late 1990s, several members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had decided to leave the band, most of them joining other armed organizations.
Mohammed Atef was the military chief of al-Qaeda, and was considered one of Osama bin Laden's two deputies, the other being Ayman Al Zawahiri, although Atef's role in the organization was not well known by intelligence agencies for years. He was killed in a US airstrike in November 2001.
