| A high-level al-Qaeda operative with Guyanese links, who was wanted in the US over aKilled: Adnan Shukrijumah as seen in these artists’ renderings.bomb plot, has been killed during a raid in Pakistan’s tribal region, according to Pakistan’s military.Adnan Shukrijumah was killed along with two other suspected fighters in South Waziristan early on Saturday, the Pakistani military said in a statement.One Pakistani soldier died while another was critically injured in the operation, the statement said.A Guyanese national who was born in Saudi Arabia, Shukrijumah is believed to have been al-Qaeda’s external-operations chief, although it is not clear whether he was still in that role at the time of his death.“The al-Qaeda leader, who was killed by the Pakistan army in a successful operation, is the same person who had been indicted in the United States,” a senior Pakistani army officer told the Associated Press news agency.Federal prosecutors in the US alleged that Shukrijumah had recruited three men in 2008 to receive training in Pakistan’s tribal areas with the intention of bombing the New York City subway system.The FBI had offered a US$5M reward for his capture.Pakistan said that Shukrijumah had fled to South Waziristan following the commencement of a military operation, Zarb-e-Azb, in neighbouring North Waziristan.Shukrijumah and two other people – described as an “accomplice” and a “local facilitator” – were killed in the raid.The alleged Manhattan subway-bombing plot was uncovered in September 2009 and Shukrijumah was indicted in that case by a New York court in July 2010.The indictment also linked him to a similar never-executed scheme to attack British subways.Eric Holder,Wholesale Authentic Jerseys, US Attorney-General, has called the alleged New York plot one of the most dangerous since the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11,Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping, 2001.Shukrijumah had lived more than 15 years in the U.S. and had become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time that a leader who is so intimately familiar with American society was placed in charge of planning attacks.Shukrijumah, 39, was born in Saudi Arabia, and is a citizen of Guyana. He had taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003. That position had put him in regular contact with killed al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden.Shukrijumah and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed — his former boss.“He’s making operational decisions is the best way to put it,” said LeBlanc, the FBI’s lead Shukrijumah investigator. “He’s looking at attacking the U.S. and other Western countries. Basically through attrition, he has become his old boss.”The FBI had been searching for Shukrijumah since 2003. He was thought to be the only al-Qaeda leader to have once held permanent U.S. resident status, or a green card.Shukrijumah’s father,Wholesale NFL Jerseys Online, who died in 2004, was born in Guyana, thus his son’s eligibility for citizenship here.Shukrijumah was named earlier in 2010 in a federal indictment as a conspirator in the case against three men accused of plotting suicide bomb attacks on New York’s subway system in 2009. The indictment marked the first criminal charges against Shukrijumah, who previously had been sought only as a witness.Shukrijumah is also suspected of playing a role in plotting of potential al-Qaeda bomb attacks in Norway and a never-executed attack on subways in the United Kingdom. Travel records and other evidence also indicate Shukrijumah did research and surveillance in spring 2001 for a never-attempted plot to disrupt commerce in the Panama Canal by sinking a freighter there, LeBlanc said.Shukrijumah, who trained at al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan camps in the late 1990s, was labeled a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. in 2004 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.Shukrijumah’s mother,Authentic Jerseys Cheap, Zurah Adbu Ahmed, reportedly said in 2010 on the front stoop of her small home in suburban Miramar, Fla., that her son frequently talked about what he considered the excesses of American society — such as alcohol and drug abuse and women wearing skimpy clothes — but that he did not condone violence.She also said she has not had contact with her son for several years.“This boy would never do evil stuff. He is not an evil person,” she said. “He loved this country. He never had a problem with the United States.”Before turning to radical strains of Islam, Shukrijumah lived in Miramar with his mother and five siblings, excelling at computer science and chemistry courses while studying at community college.He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father, a Muslim cleric and missionary trained in Saudi Arabia, decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y.At some point in the late 1990s, according to the FBI, Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in “jihad,” or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia.That led to training camps in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic and advanced training in the use of automatic weapons, explosives,Cheap NFL Jerseys, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage.While still in Afghanistan, he met another young recruit — Jose Padilla, an American citizen once suspected of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” and now imprisoned on a 2007 terrorism material support conviction in Miami.At one point,China Jerseys Wholesale, according to interrogations of Padilla and other al-Qaeda detainees, Shukrijumah and Padilla were paired in a plot to fill apartments in several high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up, but they had a falling out. |
