An elusive 30-year-old Palestinian who travels the world using false passports and multiple aliases has emerged as the new chief of operations for Al Qaeda and is suspected of organizing remnants of the terrorist network to carry out new attacks against the United States, officials said.
Abu Zubaydah has been linked to the planning of the Sept. 11 hijacking in the United States. He has also been tied to plans for a wave of terrorist attacks in Europe that were supposed to take place last year, including a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, last autumn.
While the European attacks were thwarted by the arrest of several of the plotters, U.S. investigators said they were convinced that Zubaydah was trying to activate sleeper cells of Al Qaeda for new strikes on the United States and its allies.
Noting Zubaydah is especially dangerous, investigators are eager to apprehend him because he is one of the few Al Qaeda leaders believed to know the identities of the thousands of recruits who passed through the network’s training camps in Afghanistan. Many of the trainees are now back in their home countries or elsewhere awaiting instructions.
“He’s as dangerous as anyone we are looking for, including [Osama] bin Laden,” said a senior law-enforcement official. “But it’s scary how little we know.”
U.S. takes notice
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Zubaydah first came to the attention of U.S. anti-terrorism experts as a major Al Qaeda figure after they received reports that he had coordinated the “millennium plots” to attack the Los Angeles International Airport and tourist sites in Jordan in December 1999. Those plots were foiled, and he has since been sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan.
U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence officials say they are convinced that Zubaydah has taken over the post of Al Qaeda’s chief of military operations from Mohammed Atef, who authorities believe was killed in November during a U.S. bombing raid in Afghanistan. Atef, an Egyptian, was the highest-ranking Al Qaeda leader reported to have died as a result of the U.S. military action in Afghanistan.
Zubaydah has been one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants since the late 1990s, and U.S. intelligence agencies think he was at bin Laden’s side in Afghanistan in the first weeks after the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Palestinian’s whereabouts are unknown, although Bush administration officials suspect he escaped to Pakistan.
Few details about him
U.S. officials said it would have been much easier for Zubaydah to escape capture after Sept. 11 than for other Al Qaeda leaders, given his efforts over the years to avoid cameras and conceal his identity.
Described by U.S. officials as tall and slender with a fairly light complexion, Zubaydah may have changed his appearance in recent years. Able to speak some English, he has used a string of false names and phony travel documents to board international flights and pass through customs and immigration control posts in a number of countries.
Zubaydah is thought to have been born to a Palestinian family in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The family may also have lived for a time in the Gaza Strip.
Zubaydah has eluded capture even as he has been one of the few top Al Qaeda officials to travel widely to work with the group’s cells around the world.
His activities have been so difficult to track over the years that the Justice Department has never identified Zubaydah in any of the public indictments or arrest warrants issued for other Al Qaeda leaders.
Because there are no public charges and intelligence agencies have not released a photo, Zubaydah was the only top Al Qaeda leader left off the “Most Wanted Terrorist” list issued by the FBI in October.
“How do we tell people to search for him if we can’t tell them what he looks like?” said an investigator.
Pakistan would be familiar territory to Zubaydah, whose full name may be Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn Abu Zubaydah.
Directed recruiting effort
For several years in the 1990s, he lived in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar, operating from an Al Qaeda compound known as the House of Martyrs. His job was to screen the thousands of young recruits seeking to train at terrorist camps in neighboring Afghanistan. He also ran at least one of the facilities, known as the Khalden camp, U.S. officials said.
Even more important was Zubaydah’s role in briefing the prospective terrorists as they passed through Pakistan after finishing their training in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials said it was Zubaydah who assigned them to Al Qaeda cells around the world. As coordinator of external networks for the group, he probably knows the identity and assignments of many operatives.
“He has played a very significant role in the recruitment, training and travel of new Al Qaeda operatives for several years,” said one U.S. official.