Al Qaeda names Egyptian officer-turned-militant as caretaker leader

Al Qaeda has chosen a former Egyptian Special Forces officer as interim leader of the violent extremist group in the wake of Osama Bin Laden's by a US special force in Pakistan on May2, a leading specialist on Al Qaeda said on Tuesday.

Saif al-Adel, a top Al Qaeda strategist and senior military leader, has been tapped as “caretaker” chief of the group, pending the expected appointment of deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahri as successor to Bin Laden, Noman Benotman, a former associate of Bin Laden and now an analyst with Britain’s Quilliam Foundation think tank, told Reuters.

United States prosecutors say Adel is one of Al Qaeda’s leading military chiefs, and helped to plan the bomb attacks against the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 and set up training camps for the organization in Sudan and Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Mr. Benotman said his information was based on his own contacts in jihadist circles.

“This role that he has assumed is not as overall leader, but he is in charge in operational and military terms,” he said.

“This has happened in response to the impatience displayed by jihadists online who have been extremely worried about the delay in announcing a successor,” he said

“It is hoped that now they will calm down. It also paves the way for Zawahri to take over,” he said, according to Reuters.

Pakistan’s The News newspaper corroborated the claim, citing unnamed sources in an article datelined Rawalpindi, a city home to the military headquarters of the Pakistani Armed Forces near the capital Islamabad, Agence-France Presse reported.

Bin Laden’s long-time deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, another Egyptian, is considered to be his presumed successor. Mr. Benotman said the appointment of Adel on a temporary basis may be a way for the group to gauge reaction to having someone outside the Muslim holy region of the Arabian Peninsula at the helm, according to AFP.

Mr. Benotman, who knew Adel personally when both were active as militants in Afghanistan, said Adel “already occupied a role akin to chief of staff” even before Bin Laden’s death.

Adel was believed to have fled to Iran after the US invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, and they were subsequently held under a form of house arrest there, according to some media reports.

Iranian authorities are reported by Arab media to have released him from custody about a year ago, and he then moved back to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

Some analysts say that Adel, widely believed to have been in remote areas of northern Pakistan over the past year, has since returned to Iran, or to Afghanistan, in recent weeks, according to Reuters.

(Abeer Tayel, an editor at Al Arabiya, can be reached at: [email protected])