| Shukrijumah, al-Qaeda's chief of global operations who had a $5 million (£3.2 million) bounty on his head, died in a raid by Pakistain military on a compound in South Wazoo |
He's been on the Burg radar since 2002.
On Saturday, the authorities finally caught up with Adnan Shukrijumah, al-Qaeda's chief of global operations who had a $5 million (£3.2 million) bounty on his head. Shukrijumah, 39, died in a raid by Pakistain military on a compound in South
Wazoo tribal area. He had been hunted down and killed.US authorities had him on their most wanted list since 2010, while the justice department had charged him with ordering an attack on the New York subway. The same indictment links him to a plot to blow up shopping centres in Manchester, while he has also been implicated in attacks on the London Underground and to trains in Norway.
Shukrijumah's role in al-Qaeda was to choose the targets and then recruit the holy warriors to carry them out. The attacks on New York, London and Manchester were thankfully thwarted.
Confirmation of his death came from a Pakistain senior army officer. "The al-Qaeda leader, who was killed by the Pakistain army in a successful operation, is the same person who had been indicted in the United Stated," he said.
| Shukrijumah was made al-Qaeda's chief of global operations five years ago, taking on a role filled by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He was the only senior al-Qaeda leader with a green card. |
While born in Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
, Shukrijumah, 39, had a better insight into the West than perhaps any other al-Qaeda operative, including even its founder the late Osama bin Laden
... who used to be alive but now he's not...
. He had grown up in the US, his family moving to Brooklyn when he was a teenager in the Eighties and then to Florida in the Nineties, giving Shukrijumah a familiarity with America that allowed him to move largely unnoticed. He was the only senior al-Qaeda leader with a green card.
It is reported he was a regular traveller to the Caribbean and an occasional visitor to London before he went on the run in the weeks prior to the 9/11 attack.
Federal authorities in the US believe Shukrijumah oversaw a panel with two other senior al-Qaeda leaders that hatched attacks from their base in Pakistain. One of his fellow plotters was Rashid Rauf, the Birmingham-born al-Qaeda commander, who had also criminal masterminded a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners using liquid bombs. Rauf was killed in a dronezap
in 2008 in North Waziristan; Saleh al-Somali, the third member of the panel, was killed a year later in another drone strike.Security services accuse Shukrijumah of involvement in a number of planned atrocities, including the plot to blow up a Manchester shopping centre in 2009. A dozen students were nabbed
Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please!
but none charged due to lack of evidence. Some of the suspects had been watched by MI5 agents as they filmed themselves outside the Trafford Centre on the edge of Manchester, the Arndale Centre in the city centre, and the nearby St Ann's Square. Police round up the alleged plotters after they were overheard discussing dates, understood to include the Easter bank holiday, one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.
Had it been successful, the attack would likely have been the worst in the UK. "We had to act," an intelligence source said at the time.
A year later on July 7 2010, Shukrijumah was charged by the US justice department with "an al-Qaeda plot to attack targets in the United States and United Kingdom". Two other men indicted in New York -- Abid Naseer and Tariq ur Rehman -- had previously been arrested on suspicion of terrorism over the Manchester plot.
Shukrijumah was charged with "providing and conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda; conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction; assisting the receipt of military training; committing and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries; and using firearms in relation to the same offences".
The foiled attack on the new York subway, using a different cell, was described by the attorney general Eric
Inaction JacksonHolder
... aka Mister Fast and Furious...
at the time as "one of the most dangerous" since 9/11.
Federal prosecutors said Shukrijumah had also recruited three men to carry out attacks on the London Underground as well. Details of that remain scant.
In the US, he had not amounted to much. His father, a scholar born in Guyana in South America, had been a holy man at a mosque in Brooklyn until he moved the family to Florida. Shukrijumah went to a local college before getting a job selling used cars.
His mother Zurah Adbu Ahmed , described him as a "kind, loving, caring boy", but admitted he had been angered by the excesses of American society including "drugs, alcohol, a love for sex, and clubs". She added: "That doesn't make him a terrorist."
On Saturday in a pre-dawn raid, Pak helicopter gunships swooped on Shukrijumah's hideout. He died in a shootout, the most senior al-Qaeda leader killed by the Pakistain military. Intelligence officials confirmed that five people captured were Shukrijumah's wife and four children.