Saif al-Adel

Al-Adel was born around 1960 (the FBI claims 11 April), joining the Egyptian Armed Forces around 1976 and became a colonel in the El-Sa'ka Forces by the 80's as an explosives expert, possibly being trained in the Soviet Union. He fled Egypt in 1988 and made his way to Afghanistan, joining the relatively small but well funded (and mainly Egyptian and Saudi) Maktab Al-Khidamat, the forerunner to what would become Al-Qaeda. Al-Adel would later join Osama bin Laden in Sudan after 1994. Real identity Until 2012, there was much dispute over Al-Adel's real name and identity. According to the University of Exeter professor Omar Ashour, the FBI's previous information on Al-Adel had confused the biographies of two different members of Al-Qaeda; 'Mohamed Salah Al-Din Al-Halim Zidane' and 'Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Makkawi'. Ashour states that imagery of Al-Adel in FBI "Most Wanted List" depicts Zidane and asserts that, like Makkawi, Zidane was also a colonel of the Egyptian military. As of present, most intelligence agencies and analysts today confirm that Al-Adel's real identity is that of Zidane's. Makkawi was arrested by the Egyptian police on 29 February 2012 upon arrival at Cairo Airport from Pakistan. During interrogation, Makkawi denied that he was Al-Adel and claimed that he had splintered his affiliation with the organization in 1989. By the time of his arrest, Makkawi had been married in Pakistan and had a family there, and was reportedly distressed to see his name being promoted under the image of Saif Al-Adel. An Egyptian lawyer asserted that Makkawi was an Egyptian military officer who was arrested in the 1980s over ties to jihadist organizations. He later escaped to Afghanistan and became a member of Al-Qaeda. However, the lawyer also claimed that Makkawi was a different person from Saif Al-Adel and had severed ties with Al-Qaeda long ago. The real Al-Adel, currently based in Iran, was a supervisor of Bin Laden's personal security and has been described as an "experienced professional soldier" within the jihadist movement. Some analysts believe that Al-Adel may have once used Makkawi's name as an alias. ==Militant connections==

Embassy bombings Several months before the 1998 embassy bombings, Al-Adel was helping Osama bin Laden move his followers from Najim Jihad to Tarnak Farms. The group had begrudgingly agreed to care for the troublesome Canadian 16-year-old, Abdurahman Khadr, since his father was away and his mother couldn't control his drinking, smoking and violent outbursts. However, while they were in Kabul, bin Laden asked Adel to take Abdurahman to the bus station and send him back to his family's home. On 9 September 2001, Adel was approached by Feroz Ali Abbasi, who said he was so impressed by the killing of Ahmed Shah Massoud that he wanted to volunteer for something similar. In early November 2001, the Taliban government announced they were bestowing official Afghan citizenship on Adel, as well as Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, and Shaykh Asim Abdulrahman. During the American bombardment of Kandahar, Adel was present and witnessed the deaths of Abu-Ali Al-Yafi'i and his wife, Abu-Usamah Al-Ta'zi with his wife and two children, the wife of Rayyan Al-Ta'zi, the wife of Abu-Usamah Al-Kini, and the wife of Al-Barra Al-Hijazi who was arrested in Morocco before the Casablanca bombings. In May 2003, then-State Department official Ryan Crocker provided information on the upcoming attack to Iranian officials, who apparently took no action. However, according to Saad's family and an interrogation of former Al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Saad and Al-Adel were being held prisoner in Iran when the attack took place. In 2004, he published a "terrorist manual" entitled The Base of the Vanguard, an Arabic pun on the phrases Al-Qaeda ("the base") and the Vanguards of Conquest. Al-Adel was a key source in a 2005 book on Al-Qaeda's global strategy by the journalist Fouad Hussein. Al-Adel is a leader of Al-Qaeda in Iran, according to American security expert Seth Jones. ==Current location==

According to multiple Western news agencies, Saif Al-Adel was based in Iran since the 2000s. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Saif Al-Adel was given secret asylum in Iran, during which he was monitored by the IRGC. As an ideologue who favoured engagement with Iran to jointly promote anti-American revolutions in the region, this and the constant US-led accusations of Iran and Al-Qaeda's cooperation is seen as an attempt to unite their enemies into one entity, even going as far as to claim that Sayf Al-Adel had a friendship with the commander of the IRGC's Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, In late 2001, Adel fled Afghanistan to Iran and was detained under house arrest in Tehran. Later reports indicated that he was released by Iran in March 2010 in exchange for the release of Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in November 2008, and made his way to northern Pakistan. Although Mahfouz Ould Al-Walid was reported killed in a January 2002 American airstrike, it was later revealed that he fled to Iran with Adel. In October 2010, Der Spiegel reported that Adel was in the Waziristan region in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas between Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In July 2011, it was reported that Adel returned to Iran. Egyptian authorities reported in 2012 that he was arrested at the Cairo International Airport upon his return to Egypt from Pakistan via the United Arab Emirates. However, according to Ghaith, Al-Adel never left Iran and was still under house arrest when Ghaith was captured in 2013. On 16 March 2016, a Twitter account affiliated with Al-Qaeda implicated Al-Adel as having been sent to aid against the Russian intervention in the Syrian Civil War. A similar report also placed Al-Adel as having been sent to Syria as an emissary on behalf of Al-Qaeda emir Ayman Al-Zawahiri. However, Long War Journal reported that Al-Adel is still residing in Iran. Due to the publication of an article by Al-Qaeda media Global Islamic Media Front Adel's location is speculated to have moved to Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover in 2021, since the article included a lot of praise for the newly established emirate which Adel urged all Muslims to migrate to. On 2 August 2022, a day after it was reported that Al-Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. drone strike, Al-Adel was still reported to be in Iran, which also complicated his ability to succeed Al-Zawahiri as Al-Qaeda's leader. NPR journalist Colin P. Clarke described Al-Adel's legal status in Iran as "semi-house arrest." In February 2023, a report from the United Nations, based on member state intelligence, concluded that de facto leadership of Al-Qaeda had passed to Saif Al-Adel. ==Writings==

In February 2006, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point published a number of declassified documents from the Harmony database, some of which are known or believed to have been written by Saif Al-Adel. One is a letter signed "Omar Al-Sumali, previously known as Saif Al-Adel", about the author's activities in southern Somalia during UNOSOM II (1993–1995). It identifies the southern town of Ras Kamboni as a suitable site for an Al-Qaeda base. from "'Abd-Al-Halim Adl'" to "'Mukhtar'", dated 13 June 2002, the author strongly criticises the leadership of Osama bin Laden, blaming the defeats of the preceding six months for Al-Qaeda on bin Laden's recklessness and unwillingness to listen to advice: On 11 March 2005, Al-Quds Al-Arabi published extracts from Adel's document, "Al Qaeda's Strategy to the Year 2020". In his May 2005 correspondence to Deputy Emir Ayman Al-Zawhiri, Saif Al-Adel outlined the key pillars in Al-Qaeda's revolutionary strategy: • Decisive Jihadist activities that precisely delineates goals and targets. The ultimate objective is the revival of "Islamic way of life by means of establishing the state of Islam". This endeavour has to be supervised by qualified Islamic scholars (ulema) • All decisions, objectives and policies should be based on the belief of Tawhid (Islamic monotheism) • Every activity should be implemented on the basis of short-term and long-term strategic visions. Adel writes in his message to Zawahiri: "mujahidin should have short-term plans aimed at achieving interim goals and long-term plans aimed at accomplishing the greater objective, which is the establishment of a state." of part of the hearing into the combatant status of detainee Ramzi bin Al-Shibh. Some of the evidence against bin Al-Shibh came from a diary of Saif Al-Adel found in Saudi Arabia in 2004. The CSRT document described Al-Adel by the following: to Abu Walid al Masri, then under house arrest in Iran. He discusses the War in Afghanistan, criticises the religious failings of the mujahideen and hypocrisy of Islamic scholars, and the failure of the Jihadist movement to learn from previous mistakes. Al-Masri posted the letters on the Internet in December 2010. In March 2011, Adel allegedly released another five letters through al Masri, which covered the Arab Spring uprisings. In August 2015, a eulogy written by Al-Adel for Abu Khalid Al-Suri, an Al-Qaeda veteran who served as both a senior figure in the Syrian opposition group Ahrar Al-Sham and as Ayman al Zawahiri's representative in Syria, was released. In the eulogy, he criticized the Islamic State and described them as having "twisted" and "perverted" thoughts. Sayf Al-Adel counselled Islamist fighters to prioritize attacking the police forces, military soldiers, state assets of enemy governments, etc. which he described as acceptable targets in military operations. Asserting that attacking women and children of enemies are contrary to Islamic values, Sayf Al-Adel asked: "If we target the general public, how can we expect their people to accept our call to Islam?". It has since been published on Amazon. ==Personal life==

Adel is married to the daughter of Egyptian Jihadist and journalist, Abu Walid Al-Masri. The couple reportedly have five children. == See also ==