Difference between revisions of "Zayn al-'Abidin Abu Zubaydah"
(No difference)
|
Latest revision as of 23:34, 5 August 2007
Background
PHONETICS AH-Boo Zoo-BAY-duh
KEY ALIAS(ES) Hani, Tariq
AFFILIATION Al-Qa'ida
NATIONALITY Palestinian, raised in Saudi Arabia
Zayn al-'Abidin Abu Zubaydah was a leading extremist facilitator who operated in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region from the mid-1990s. Bin Ladin recruited him to be one of al-Qa'ida's senior travel facilitators following Abu Zubaydah's success in 1996 at securing safe passage of al-Qa'ida members returning from Sudan to Afghanistan. In November 2001, Abu Zubaydah helped smuggle now-deceased al-Qa'ida in Iraq leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi and some 70 Arab fighters out of Kandahar, Afghanistan, into Iran.
At the time of his capture, Abu Zubaydah was trying tu organize a terrorist attack in Israel and he had enlisted the help of Zarqawi in finding a smuggling route into Israel for moving persons and materials. Although not believed to be directly linked to the attacks on 11 September 2001, the $50,000 that Abu Zubaydah received from Saudi donors and passed to al-Qa'ida's senior leadership for his Israel plot may have been used for the attacks. Moreover, three of the hijackers received basic training at al-Qa'ida's Khaldan camp in Afghanistan, which was part of the "Khaldan group" of camps and guesthouses that he oversaw between 1995 and 2000. Abu Zubaydah's early work as an extremist facilitator in the mid-1990s focused on recruiting Arabs in Pakistan and arranging their travel for various training camps in Afghanistan and the frontlines of Bosnia and Chechnya. Between 1994 and early 2000, he often smuggled both persons and chemicals -- such as cyanide and nitrates for use by al-Qa'ida in making weapons -- from Pakistan into Afghanistan. He learned document forgery and trained in explosives at the Khaldan camp. where he advanced to become instructor and then administrative director. In his role as a senior mujahidin facilitator and Khaldan camp director, he assisted Western-based trained extremists, including Americans.
Abu Zubaydah established a document forgery network in Pakistan that supported al-Qa'ida and other extremist groups. In the late 1990s, he procured funds from donors in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, which he doled out to various contacts in Pakistan-based extremist networks for their terrorist activities.
Abu Zubaydah also assisted US Millennium Plot operative Ahmad Ressam to enter Afghanistan to attend a training camp in the late 1990s and to travel to Canada via the United States at the end of 1998. He facilitated the travel and training of the Jordanian cell that was involved in Jordan's Millennium Plot.(Source)