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Al-Qaeda, officially known as Qaedat al-Jihad, is a multinational militant Sunni Islamic extremist network composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but may also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings, the September 11 attacks, and the 2002 Bali bombings; it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, India, and various other countries.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri was an Egyptian-born terrorist, and physician who served as the second emir of al-Qaeda from June 16, 2011, until his death.
The Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) was a purported nonprofit charitable trust based in Saudi Arabia. It was determined to be a front for terrorist group Al-Qaeda and was banned by the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267 and the US Department of the Treasury in November 2002. The BIF's chief executive officer Enaam Arnaout began a ten-year sentence in 2003 after pleading guilty for racketeering in a U.S. federal court.
The Maktab al-Khidamat, also Maktab Khadamāt al-Mujāhidīn al-'Arab, also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, was founded in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam, Wa'el Hamza Julaidan, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to raise funds and recruit foreign mujahideen for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. MAK became the forerunner to al-Qaeda and was instrumental in creating the fundraising and recruitment network that benefited Al-Qaeda during the 1990s.
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, which may be abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Islamic extremist Salafi jihadist terrorist group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999 and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters and a considerable Iraqi membership.
The Hamburg cell or Hamburg terror cell was, according to U.S. and German intelligence agencies, a group of radical Islamists based in Hamburg, Germany, that included students from different Arab countries who eventually came to be key operatives in the 9/11 attacks. Important members included Mohamed Atta, who led the four hijacking teams in 2001 and piloted American Airlines Flight 11; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who conspired with the other three members but was unable to enter the United States; Marwan al-Shehhi, who piloted United Airlines Flight 175; and Ziad Jarrah, who piloted United Airlines Flight 93 and failed to hit a target in Washington, D.C.. Other members included Said Bahaji, Zakariya Essabar, Mounir el-Motassadeq, and Abdelghani Mzoudi.
The Saddam–al-Qaeda conspiracy theory was a conspiracy theory based on allegations made by U.S. government officials, who claimed that a highly secretive relationship existed between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the radical Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003, specifically through a series of meetings reportedly involving the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). In the lead-up to the Iraq War, George W. Bush administration officials alleged that the Saddam Hussein regime had an operational relationship with al-Qaeda, basing the administration's rationale for war, in part, on this allegation and others.
Abu Musab al-Suri, born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, is a suspected Al-Qaeda member and writer best known for his 1,600-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 strategist'.
This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Hamid Dawud Mohamed Khalil al-Zawi, known as Abu Hamza al-Baghdadi and Abu Omar al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi, was the leader of the militant groups Mujahideen Shura Council, and its successor, the Islamic State of Iraq, which fought against US forces and their Iraqi allies in the Iraq War.
Hamida al-Attas, born A'alia Ghanem, is the mother of the deceased al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war". He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".
Hassan Ghul, born Mustafa Hajji Muhammad Khan, was a Saudi-born Pakistani member of al-Qaeda who revealed the kunya of Osama Bin Laden's messenger, which eventually led to Operation Neptune Spear and the death of Osama Bin Laden. Ghul was an ethnic Pashtun whose family was from Waziristan. He was designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee of the Security Council in 2012.
Peter Bergen's The Osama bin Laden I Know (ISBN 978-0-7432-7891-1) is a book published in 2006. It is a comprehensive collection of personal accounts by people who have met Osama bin Laden or worked with him at various stages of his terrorist career.
Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, kunya Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar and poet previously associated with al-Qaeda. A veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, he served on al-Qaeda's Shura Council and ran a religious school called the Institute of Islamic Studies in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from the late 1990s until the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
It is believed that members of Al-Qaeda are hiding along the border of Afghanistan and northwest sections of Pakistan. In Iraq, elements loosely associated with al-Qaeda, in the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization commanded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have played a key role in the War in Iraq.
Muhammad Abdallah Hasan Abu-al-Khayr, also known as Abu Abdallah al-Halabi, was a citizen of Saudi Arabia notable for being named on its 2009 list of most wanted suspected terrorists. He was alleged to be one of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards, and one of his sons-in-law.
Muhsin al-Fadhli was an alleged senior leader of Khorasan, an offshoot of the al-Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaeda.
Ibrahim Issa Hajji Muhammad al-Bakr is a Qatari Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Al-Bakr also has a history of supporting al-Qaeda and the Taliban through the collection and transfer of funds. Al-Bakr’s fundraising efforts for extremist groups and associations with al-Qaeda operatives and facilitators have led the United Nations and U.S. Department of the Treasury to list al-Bakr as a facilitator of terrorism. Ibrahim al-Bakr’s current location is unknown.
Muhammad Yusuf Uthman Abd al Salam was the founder of Jund al-Aqsa, a Salafist jihadist group active in the Syrian Civil War. He is also commonly referred to by his nom de guerre Abu Abdulaziz al-Qatari. He was a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin who lived in Qatar.
References
- 1 2 Bergen, Peter. "The Osama bin Laden I Know", 2006. p. 262
- 1 2 B. Raman (May 2004). "After Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg". Kashmir Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2009-10-01.
The German authorities arrested on April 23, 2002, Shadi Abdalla, Mohamed Abu Dhess, Aschraf al-Dagma, Ismail Shalabi and Djamel Moustfa on charges of belonging to al-Tawhid and planning to carry out acts of terrorism in Germany.
- 1 2 "Treasury Designates Six Al-Qaida Terrorists". United States Treasury. 2003-09-24. Archived from the original on 2010-05-27.
Also designated are members of Zarqawi’s German-based terrorist cell Al Tawhid, an organization with close links to al-Qaida. The German government has established that Zarqawi serves as the operational leader of the cell.
- 1 2 "Bin Laden 'guard' off terror list". BBC News. 2005-01-05. Retrieved 2012-05-02.
However, the US - which could have blocked Mr Abdellah's delisting - was initially sceptical when Germany first raised the issue of possible rehabilitation of the informant in autumn last year. But Washington later gave its go-ahead, after Berlin had allowed US officials to question Mr Abdellah about his links with top al-Qaeda suspects.