Al Qaeda Chief Abu Ubaida al Masri Dead
April 9, 2008
If this is your first time visiting National Terror Alert you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. The National terror Alert feed features breaking news, alerts and bulletins on demand and it's free of charge..
You will only see this message on your first visit to the site. Thanks for visiting!
Abu Ubaida al Masri, a suspected mastermind of Al Qaeda plots including the London transportation bombings of 2005, has died of an infectious disease in Pakistan, Western anti-terrorism officials said Wednesday.
The Egyptian militant is thought to have died of hepatitis C, a U.S. anti-terrorism official said. Masri was the powerful, if little-known, chief of the terrorist network’s external operations who allegedly trained recruits in hide-outs in Pakistan and dispatched them to carry out attacks against the West, according to Western investigators.
As The Times reported last week, anti-terrorism officials in at least three countries had come to believe that Masri had died in recent months, but investigators did not have confirmation and noted that Al Qaeda had not paid tribute to Masri with eulogies on the Internet as it has with other fallen leaders.
Recently, however, anti-terrorism investigators detected conversations among Al Qaeda militants revealing that Masri had died of hepatitis C, the U.S. official said. Death by illness would explain the lack of eulogies, which are generally reserved for extremists who die violently as “martyrs,” officials said.
“The bad guys have been talking about it among themselves,” said the U.S. anti-terrorism official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive information. “I would say it happened during the last three months. If it had been an airstrike they would have said it. But Abu Ubaida al Masri wasn’t well known enough or high-ranking enough to warrant automatic obituaries unless he died [as a 'martyr'].”
Comments
Got something to say?
News And Alerts Directly To Your Mobile Device
Advertisement
Add this Live Alert
