New Al Qaeda Message Confirms Head of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan Still Alive
By Andrew Cochran
The SITE Intelligence Group has issued a press release that a new speech is forthcoming from Al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, containing eulogies for two recently killed Al Qaeda commanders, Abu Khabab al-Masri (a.k.a. Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar) and Abu Abdullah al-Shami, an escapee from Bagram prison in July 2005 and killed last month in a U.S. strike. I posted about al-Masri's reported death on July 28, and Evan Kohlmann posted the NEFA Foundation's transcript of Al Qaeda's acknowledgement of that on August 6.
The value of this message is that it is final confirmation that the head of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, was not killed in a Pakistani strike as reported on August 12, as deduced by his signature on this message and his exclusion from the names of the eulogized. The American intel community never supported that report, as I noted in the update to my post.
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