Osama Bin Laden
Mullah Mohammed Omar
Supreme leader of the Taliban militant government in Afghanistan
from 1996-2001 and wanted by the US Government for providing safe haven
to the Al-Queda leadership as they launched their terrorism war against
the US and other Western nations during that time period.
So far he has eluded capture when Alliance forces captured first
Kabul and later Kandahar.
Currently (in the middle of winter) believed hiding in a cave in
Helmand province.
Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi
Captured in Late Dec 2001 by Northern Alliance. Turned over to US in early Jan.
The Al Qaeda leader, Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, would be one of the highest-ranking members of the terrorist group to come under U.S. control. A second U.S. official, also speaking anonymously, said al-Libi is among Al Qaeda's "top 20" leaders.
While several of Usama bin Laden's chief lieutenants have been killed by U.S. bombs, al-Libi would be the most senior member of the group in U.S. custody.
The U.S. has already frozen al-Libi's assets when he was place on the US List of 22 Most Wanted Terrorists.
After his capture US forces indicate that he has been most helpful in providing information to
thwart other additional Al-Queda terrorists attacks.
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi
The central financial figure has been identified by U.S. prosecutors as Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a fugitive
who many investigators believe is al Qaeda’s finance chief. Al-Hawsawi, who uses numerous aliases and is believed
to have disappeared in Karachi, Pakistan, just before the attacks, allegedly transferred most of the money used to
pay for the hijackers’ pilot training, living expenses and airline tickets in the United States, law enforcement officials
said. The financial hub of this arrangement was the United Arab Emirates, where loose banking regulations and a
large population of Islamic militants provided easy cover for the transfers, they said.
Al-Hawsawi has been identified as the primary source of funding to the Sept 11th hijackers. US investigators
completed an exhaustive four month investigation to chronicle every financial transaction made by the hijackers
and based on their research are implementing safeguards with banking authorities to detect and block similar
financial operations in the future.
Top Al-Queda Lieutenants
After Atef, chief among those U.S. officials say are dead:
The captured include:
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim
Was a co-founder of al Qaeda, the Islamic militant group led by bin Laden.
He is charged with attempted murder in the stabbing of a jail guard November 1, 2000, while awaiting trial with four other defendants for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and injured more than 4,000 others.
Salim was born in Sudan and grew up in Iraq. According to prosecutors, he was in charge of al Qaeda's financial affairs when the group was based in Sudan in the early 1990s. He is also accused of managing Wadi Aqiq, bin Laden's umbrella company that procured communications equipment and conventional weapons for the organization.
Salim was known among al Qaeda members as "Abu Hajer al Iraqi" and was considered a religious scholar. According to the embassy bombings indictment, Salim taught followers that U.N. forces deployed in Somalia in 1993 represented a U.S. plan to attack Muslims.
Benevolence International Foundation
Federal agents arrested the director of an Illinois-based charity Tuesday on 30-Apr-2002
and charged him with lying about links to Osama bin Laden and international terrorism.
Federal authorities said Enaam Arnaout, 39, a Syrian-born naturalized U.S. citizen who is executive director of the Benevolence International Foundation, was charged with perjury for lying during the government's investigation of the BIF. The organization itself was also charged with perjury.
The Treasury Department froze the BIF's assets in last December because the government claimed the group had ties to al Qaeda, bin Laden's international terrorist organization. In a 35-page criminal complaint, the government says the BIF supported terrorist groups and individuals and had "direct dealings" with Chechen guerrillas and Hezb e Islami -- identified by the government as a military group operating in Afghanistan and Azerbaijan.
A Kuwaiti lieutenant of Usama bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was the likely mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Tuesday. "There's lots of links that tie him to 9/11," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He's the most significant operational player out there right now." U.S. investigators believe Mohammed planned many aspects of the Sept. 11 attacks, turning bin Laden's calls for dead Americans into reality. A second U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mohammed played a key role in planning the attacks as did Abu Zubaydah, the Al Qaeda leader now in U.S. custody. The official acknowledged that Mohammed played a critical role in planning the attacks but said questions remain about the extent of his leadership. Mohammed was a close associate of Abu Zubaydah, officials said.
Designated one of the FBI's most-wanted terrorists, Mohammed is at large in Afghanistan or nearby, the counterterrorism official said. Other bin Laden lieutenants are also believed to have helped put together the attacks, the official said. But evidence is mounting that Mohammed was at the center of the operational planning. Within three months of Sept. 11, according to the official, the FBI learned that Mohammed had moved money that was used to pay for the attacks and since then the United States has gathered other significant evidence pointing to him as the key planner. The official declined to go into detail, citing a need to protect intelligence information.
Mohammed is accused of working with Ramzi Yousef in the first bombing of the World Trade Center, which left six dead in 1993. He and Yousef, hiding in the Philippines, also are accused of plotting in 1995 to bomb several trans-Pacific airliners heading for the United States. Yousef, now serving a life sentence in the United States, also is believed to have planned to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. The State Department is offering a $25 million reward for information leading to Mohammed's capture. Officials said he continues to plot attacks against U.S. interests.
Mohammed was charged by federal prosecutors in New York in 1996 in connection with the alleged 1995 plot. The FBI describes him as in his mid-thirties, sometimes wearing a beard and glasses, and slightly overweight. His aliases include Ashraf Refaat Nabith Henin, Khalid Abdul Wadood, Salem Ali and Fahd Bin Abdallah Bin Khalid. U.S. officials have repeatedly said that capturing or killing bin Laden's cadre of lieutenants — men like Mohammed — is a key goal in the war on terrorism. In some ways, they are considered as dangerous as bin Laden: Where Al Qaeda's leader serves as an inspiration to his followers, his top aides conduct the nuts-and-bolts planning of attacks. The lieutenants are said to pick targets and attack dates, provide money and training to the foot soldiers and overseas cells chosen to carry them out — sometimes at the cost of their own lives — and maintain operational secrecy. Most of the 19 suicide hijackers are thought not to have known the entirety of the Sept. 11 plot — or that they were going to die — but Mohammed apparently did, the counterterrorism official said. Mohammed has not been charged in connection with the attacks, which crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, leaving more than 3,000 dead.
Abu Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in March, is said to have told U.S. interrogators that the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was destined for the White House, suggesting he knew of the planning. Some of the hijackers trained at Abu Zubaydah's Khalden camp in Afghanistan, the counterterrorism official said. Generally, though, the hijackers trained in groups of one or two at several camps, and they were kept apart from most other trainees. According to investigators, the Sept. 11 attacks were largely paid for by Shaikh Saiid al-Sharif, also known as Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, who is bin Laden's financial chief. Officials traced a number of financial transactions between him and several of hijackers, but Shaikh Saiid was not believed to have the wherewithal to plan an operation of Sept. 11's magnitude. He is at large.
A fourth bin Laden lieutenant, Tawfiq Attash Khallad, is also suspected of playing a planning role. He met with future hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000, just before Almihdhar and Alhazmi entered the United States. Khallad paid for some of the pair's travel before Sept. 11, the counterterrorism official said. Khallad, also believed to be a chief planner of the October 2000 USS Cole bombing, remains at large, the official said.
Some key connections have yet to be worked out, the official acknowledged, such as who selected chief hijacker Mohammed Atta and the rest for the operation. Bin Laden and his top two deputies, Ayman al-Zawahri and Mohammed Atef, were believed to have known about the attacks in advance, by virtue of their rank in Al Qaeda. Al-Zawahri's family was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan. It is not known where he is. Atef, killed by military and CIA airstrikes in November, also had a martyrdom video of one of the so-called "20th hijackers" — the ones who never made it on a plane — at his house. Ramzi Binalshibh was a member Atta's cell in Germany, but was unable to enter the United States. He remains at large. The official said the video remains one of the key connections between Atta and bin Laden's inner circle. Bin Laden himself — assuming he wasn't just boasting — admitted foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks on a Nov. 9 videotape of him having dinner with a Saudi sheik, al-Zawahri and some other supporters.
Unidentified
The Justice Department released parts of new al-Qaida videotapes Thursday, asking Americans and others abroad to be on the lookout for five men shown in the images who Attorney General John Ashcroft said could be planning further suicide attacks on the United States.
On the tapes, “the young men deliver what appear to be martyrdom messages from suicide terrorists,” said Ashcroft, who warned that “the men may be trained and prepared to commit future suicide terrorist acts.”
The Five Tapes were found in the home of al-Qaida leader Mohammed Atef, Ashcroft said at a news conference where silent excerpts were played.
U.S. special forces discovered them inside Afghanistan.
Among the five men Ashcroft said were depicted on the tapes, one of whom was not identified, was Ramzi Binalshibh, named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the attacks on Washington and New York.
Binalshibh, 29, of Yemen, was a roommate of suspected terrorist ringleader Mohammed Atta when the two lived in Germany. His “is a name you have heard before,” Ashcroft said.
Four of the men were identified by name: Abd Al-Rahim, Muhammad Sa'id Ali Hasan, Khalid Ibn Muhammad Al-Juhani and Ramzi Binalshibh. The fifth man was unidentified.
Mohammed Atef
Atef, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, helped found bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network. U.S. officials have said that Atef
was believed to have died in a U.S. airstrike and had principal responsibility for supervising the training of al-Qaida members.
Atef was indicted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Hashim bin Abas
Arrested Dec 2001 as prime suspect in plot to attack American targets in Singapore.
John Walker
20-year old American citizen from California, found fighting for the Taliban / Al-Queda
in the city of Konduz. Boasts to having met with high-ranking leadership and pursuing
the goal of establishing a pure-Islamic state.
David Hicks
Young Australian national found fighting for Al-Queda in Afghanistan.
Mokhtar Haouari
An Algerian living in Canada was convicted by U.S. Civil Court for participation in the failed Millienium bombing plot
targeting the Los Angeles International Airport and sentenced (16-JAN-02) to 24 years in prison, the maximum penalty possible.
Wadih El-Hage
Now serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison for conspiracy to commit terrorism in the
August 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa. Within Al Qaeda, El-Hage was nicknamed
“the Manager,” according to federal prosecutors. For several years during the 1990s, the U.S. government alleges,
El-Hage performed nefarious chores for his terrorist boss, like purchasing a jet plane in order to deliver Stinger missiles (El-Hage personally handed the keys to bin Laden at a dinner party).
Jose Padilla
Jose Padilla, also known as Abdullah Al Muhajir, was in the custody of the U.S. military and is being treated as an enemy combatant. Government agents have arrested a turncoat American citizen who plotted with Al Qaeda terrorists to build and explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" within the United States. A second person, Benjamin Ahmed Mohammed, had been taken into custody in Pakistan "recently" and was implicated in the bomb plot. Mohammed will continue to be detained in Pakistan, an official said, and there are no plans to bring him to the United States.
Padilla was arrested May 8 as he flew into Chicago's O'Hare International Airport from Pakistan, Ashcroft said in Moscow, where he was attending a long-planned meeting with his "foreign counterparts." He said the government's suspicions about Muhajir's plans came from "multiple, independent, corroborating sources." He said Al Qaeda apparently believed Padilla would be permitted to travel freely within the U.S. because of his American citizenship and because he carried a U.S. passport.
Padilla is a former Chicago street gang member who served time in prison in the 1990s, converted to Islam and met with Al Qaeda leaders in 2001 before returning to the United States, officials said. The 31-year-old is a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., who moved to Chicago at age 4. Padilla was transferred Monday morning from Justice Department custody in New York City to a high-security U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., Johnson said
Officials said three more people identified as top Al Qaeda leaders are believed dead in the fighting across Afghanistan. Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, also known as Mahfouz Ould al-Walid; Abu Jafar al-Jaziri, also known as Omar Chaabani; and Abu Salah al-Yemeni are believed to have been killed, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Abu Hafs was believed to be about 26 and had ties to Al Qaeda terrorist operations. Al-Jaziri and al-Yemeni were logistics coordinators for the terrorist group.