AL QAEDA MASTER AND SUBWAY BOMB PLOTTER…FIEND AT LARGE
Al Qaeda master met ’09 plotter
By ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO
Current and former counterterrorism officials said top al Qaeda operative Adnan Shukrijumah met with one of the would-be suicide bombers in a plot that Attorney General Eric Holder called one of the most dangerous since 9/11.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have named Shukrijumah in a draft terrorism indictment, but yesterday the Justice Department was still discussing whether to cite his role. Some officials feared that the extra attention might hinder efforts to capture him.
Intelligence officials believe Shukrijumah is one of the top candidates to become al Qaeda’s next head of external operations, the man in charge of planning attacks worldwide.
Current and former counterterrorism officials discussed the case on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it.
Shukrijumah, 34, has eluded the FBI for years. The Saudi-born terrorist studied at a community college in Florida, but when the FBI showed up to arrest him as a material witness to a terrorism case in 2003, he had already left the country. The United States is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
Intelligence officials began unraveling the subway plot last year, when US intelligence intercepted an e-mail from an account that al Qaeda had used in a recent terrorist plot, officials said. The e-mail discussed bombmaking techniques and was sent to an address in Denver, setting off alarms within the CIA and FBI from Islamabad to the United States.
Najibullah Zazi and two friends were arrested in September 2009 before they could carry out a trio of suicide bombings in Manhattan. Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay have pleaded guilty, and admitted planning to detonate homemade bombs on the subway during rush hour. A third man, Adis Medunjanin, awaits trial.
A fourth suspect, a midlevel al Qaeda operative known as Ahmed, traded the e-mails with Zazi, who was frantically trying to perfect his bomb-making recipe, officials said. The United States wants to bring the Pakistani man to America for trial on charges that are not yet public.
Pakistani officials also have arrested a fifth person, known as Afridi, who worked with Ahmed, officials said.
The FBI and US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn declined comment yesterday.
The meeting with Shukrijumah is among many new details officials told AP about how the men hooked up with al Qaeda. The new account provides a rare glimpse into al Qaeda’s recruiting process.
The trio’s lengthy odyssey took them from their homes in Queens to the mountainous, lawless frontier in northwest Pakistan.
Prosecutors have said the men, motivated by their anger at the US war in Afghanistan, traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan, in the summer of 2008 to fight against US forces.
The three received weapons training, but al Qaeda had bigger plans for the men than the Afghanistan front line.
Salah al-Somali, then the head of external operations, and Rashid Rauf, a British terrorist linked to a 2006 jetliner bomb plot, explained to the three men that they were more useful as suicide bombers in the United States.
Comments are closed.
