According to a growing number of media reports, a recent U.S. airstrike on a Pakistani border village has likely killed a senior Egyptian Al-Qaida commander named Midhat Mursi (a.k.a. Abu Khabab al-Masri). Since the late 1980s, Abu Khabab has served as a top military aide and deputy to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan. Mursi was responsible for co-managing Al-Qaida's notorious Derunta military training complex near Jalalabad, where he maintained his own elite terrorist graduate school aptly named the "Abu Khabab Camp."
In November 1995, Abu Khabab organized his first major terrorist plot in response to an international crackdown on the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, dispatching two suicide bombers from the Derunta training camp to target the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The twin car bombs killed 17 people and wounded 59 others. In later memoirs regarding Abu Khabab's 1995 operation, Ayman al-Zawahiri explained, "The basic objective was to attack the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, but if that proved difficult to do, then to strike at any other U.S. target in Pakistan. However, following intensive and detailed surveillance, we discovered that bombing the U.S. Embassy was beyond our capability."
Following his success in Islamabad, Abu Khabab teamed up with other veteran Al-Qaida commanders (including Abu Musab al-Suri, who was recently captured in Pakistan) to train a new generation of terrorist sleeper cells destined for targets in the Western world. ...
Read the rest at the link.
UPDATE: Stefania at Free Thoughts points out that this guy also trained the "Shoe Bomber". Don't miss her important, bilingual (Italian/English) blog.
