He was recommended by a close relative who was trusted by leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the network's Yemeni wing, according to US intelligence.
His British passport made him attractive as a recruit for a suicide mission as he would be able to board a flight to America under the visa-waiver programme.
But AQAP strategists were persuaded that he was a true believer willing to blow himself up on a plane to the US by what they believed to be his reliable family roots.
The mole, who has been moved with his family to a country outside the Middle East under Western intelligence protection, was reportedly born in the region, but grew up Europe and had British citizenship.
"He apparently came from what AQAP regarded as a good family, meaning that they believed he was a radical Islamist in his DNA, and was brought in to the group by a close male relative," said Dan Goure, a Pentagon consultant and vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a national security think-tank.
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
