Yemen: Drone kills Al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaqi

The defence ministry in Sanaa said he was killed along with several other suspected Al-Qaeda operatives on Friday, and tribal sources said he died in a strike on two vehicles in Marib province, an Al-Qaeda stronghold in eastern Yemen.

Awlaqi was charged in November in Yemen for alleged ties with Al-Qaeda and incitement to kill foreigners.

Washington had linked the imam and son of a former Yemeni government minister to a shooting rampage in November 2009 at a US army base and to a botched Christmas Day attack that year on a US airliner.

A Yemeni court, under mounting US pressure to fight Al-Qaeda after a foiled air cargo bomb plot in late October last year, had ordered his arrest by any means for his alleged Al-Qaeda links.

“Mr Awlaqi is a problem,” US President Barack Obama s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said in January, 2010. “He s clearly a part of Al-Qaeda in (the) Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He s not just a cleric.”

Brennan directly accused Awlaqi of having links with Major Nidal Hasan who is suspected of shooting dead 13 people at Fort Hood military base in Texas, and who is set to face trial in a military court on March 5, 2012.

Awlaqi may also have had contact with Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up the Christmas Day plane, Brennan said.

Obama has accused AQAP of arming and training Abdulmutallab and said the group was also responsible for last October s parcel bomb plot, which originated in Yemen.

Two parcels addressed to Jewish institutions in Chicago and containing the explosive PETN hidden in ink toner cartridges were found to have been freighted from Sanaa on commercial airlines.

In July, 2010, Washington placed Awlaqi on its list of terrorism supporters, freezing his financial assets and banning any transactions with him.

In a video tape posted by AQAP on jihadist websites in May last year Awlaqi, who is in his late 30s, urged Muslims serving in the US army to follow Hasan s example and also defended Abdulmutallab.

Awlaqi, in a later Internet posting in November, went a step further and called for the murder of any US citizen. “Do not consult anyone in killing Americans,” he said, the US monitoring group SITE Intelligence reported.

“Killing the devil does not need any fatwa (religious edict),” he added. “It s either us or you,” Awlaqi said, addressing Americans in the video.

In May last year, the United States said it was actively hunting Awlaqi. “He has an agenda just like Al-Qaeda to strike targets in Yemen, throughout the world including here in the United States,” the White House spokesman said.

But an Awlaqi relative has insisted the imam “is not a fighter of Al-Qaeda.” “He is just a preacher,” he said.
Awlaqi comes from a well-off family. His father is a former minister of agriculture and was the president of the university of Sanaa.

He was born in the US state of New Mexico in 1971, attended school in Yemen and graduated from Colorado State University in civil engineering. He also holds a master s degree in education leadership from San Diego State University.

He made a name for himself delivering sermons in English in mosques across the United States, where he also worked for a charity association founded by Yemeni cleric Abdul Majeed al-Zendani, whom the US government has identified as a “global terrorist.”

Awlaqi met two of the bombers on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon building in the United States on September 11, 2001, according to the 9/11 Commission Report.

Awlaqi was arrested in Yemen in 2006 for his role in kidnapping the son of a rich Yemeni family and demanding ransom money “to finance Al-Qaeda,” Yemeni security sources said.

Two years later he was set free on condition that he report to police daily, but he fled to the eastern Shabwa region.
Awlaqi went to ground after an air raid on December 24, 2009 struck a meeting of Al-Qaeda leaders in Wadi Rafadh, in Shabwa province, killing 34.

In May this year, a Yemeni tribal source said Awlaqi narrowly escaped a US drone attack three days after American commandos killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

The strike in Shabwa was the first reported US targeting of other key figures in the terror network after a commando raid killed bin Laden inside Pakistan on May 2.

Awlaqi was married with five children.

Drone attack kills 10 Al Qaeda suspects in Yemen

Ten Al Qaeda suspects were killed while a top leader in the network escaped death as US drones carried out several air strikes on their strongholds in Yemen s south, local officials said Wednesday 21/9/2011.

“US drones carried out two air strikes on Al-Mahfad (in the southern Abyan province) where Al-Qaeda militants — among them Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula s (AQAP) number two Saeed al-Shehri — are present,” said a local official in the village.

Four suspected militants were killed while Shehri escaped, said the well-informed official who requested anonymity.

Another local official from the town of Shaqra — controlled by the militants since June — said that six other “Al-Qaeda gunmen” were killed and three were wounded in two separate air raids on the town.

Since anti-government protests swept Yemen in late January, militants have taken advantage of the weakening of central authority to set up base in several southern provinces as well as Marib province in the east.

In May, a group who name themselves the Partisans of Sharia (Islamic Law), believed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda, seized control of many regions across Abyan province.

Washington and other Western governments have repeatedly expressed growing concern about the role Al-Qaeda might play in Yemen if the regime of veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh collapses and a power vacuum ensues.

Late on Tuesday, the Washington Post said that the United States is building an array of secret new drone bases to conduct strikes against Al-Qaeda targets in Somalia and Yemen.

The Post said the United States is also conducting drone missions over Yemen and Somalia from Djibouti, seeking to weaken Al-Qaeda affiliates in both countries.

“It s a conscious recognition that those are the hot spots developing right now,” it quoted a former senior US military official as saying.

The United States regularly launches drone strikes against suspected militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where it claims to have greatly degraded Al-Qaeda s core leadership.

Al Qaeda number two killed in drone attack

 According to reports, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman was killed in Pakistan in another big blow to the terrorist group that the US believes to be on the verge of defeat, a senior Obama administration official said Saturday.

The Libyan national who was the network s former operational leader rose to Al Qaeda s No. 2 spot after the US killed Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during a raid on his Pakistan compound in May.

As per media report, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that Al Qaeda s defeat was within reach if the US could mount a string of successful attacks on the group s weakened leadership.

Al-Rahman was killed Aug 22 in the lawless Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, the official disclosed Saturday on condition of anonymity.

The official would not say how al-Rahman was killed. But his death came on the same day that a CIA drone strike was reported in Waziristan.

Al-Rahman, believed to be in his mid-30s, was a close confidant of bin Laden and once served as bin Laden s emissary to Iran. Born in Libya, al-Rahman joined bin Laden as a teenager in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

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Hillary Clinton pledges strong alliance with Philippines

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed Thursday to maintain a strong alliance with the Philippines as it fights militants who officials say are now using Iraq-style tactics.

Clinton’s two-day visit came amid a backdrop of persistent violence from the Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group in the volatile south of the country, where US Special Forces advisers are helping to train and equip Filipino soldiers.

Cheered by an estimated 2,000 students, who waved both the US and Philippines flags, Clinton visited a school in a Manila suburb that was badly flooded and received books and other supplies from the US government.

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Hillary Clinton pledges strong alliance with Philippines was first posted on November 12, 2009 at 7:55 pm.

Mock Execution Used CIA Get Info From Al Qaeda

WASHINGTON: US Central Intelligence Agency interrogators used a handgun and an electric drill to try to frighten a captured al Qaeda commander into giving up information, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Citing a report by the agency’s inspector general and unnamed former and current US officials, the newspaper said the tactics were used on Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Nashiri, who was captured in November 2002 and held for four years in one of the CIA’s secret prisons, ultimately became one of three al Qaeda leaders subjected to waterboarding, the report said. A federal judge in New York has ordered a redacted version of the classified IG report to be publicly released Monday, in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the paper said.

The report, written in 2004, offers new details about Nashiri’s interrogation, including episodes in which the detainee reportedly was threatened with death or grave injury if he refused to cooperate, The Post said.

In one instance, a CIA interrogator showed Nashiri a gun and sought to frighten the detainee into thinking he would be shot, said the paper, citing unnamed sources.

In a separate encounter, a power drill was held near Nashiri’s body and repeatedly turned on and off, according to the report. The federal torture statute prohibits US nationals from threatening anyone in his or her custody with imminent death, The Post noted. –

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Mock Execution Used CIA Get Info From Al Qaeda was first posted on August 22, 2009 at 1:17 pm.