The terrorist leader is said to have guided Al-Qaeda to become one of the biggest radical movements, having been identified as a mastermind of the Septemattacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people. Two hundred and twenty-four people died in the three East Africa blasts, including 12 Americans, with more than 4,500 people wounded.Ī $10million reward for information has been placed on al-Adel's head.Īnd with ex-leader al-Zawahiri now slain, the attention of America's terrorist hunters will likely go onto Saif al-Adel.Īl-Zawahiri, who took over Al-Qaeda after Bin Laden’s death in 2011, was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan following a US airstrike this evening. US intelligence states: 'Al-Adel is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.'
Osama's assumed successor son Hamza was killed in 2019 and fellow senior strategist Abu Muhammad al-Masri was assassinated in 2020. When training young soldiers, he was known to kidnap them in the middle of the night and conduct savage beatings in order to harden the troops.Īl-Adel has risen to the top of al-Qaeda as much because of his own talents as by the United States' ruthlessness in killing his superiors. President Biden confirmed tonight in an address from the White House that an American drone strike killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan Thought not as brainwashed by Islamist ideology as his al-Qaeda colleagues, al-Adel used his military training to rise to the top of the shadowy organisation in the wake of the September 11 attacks, in which senior operatives killed themselves.Īl-Adel was in fact against the so-called 'Planes Operation', as it was known by members of the terror cell.īut he helped organise the single most deadly terrorist attack in history after bin Laden became committed to the idea.Īccording to ex-FBI agent and counter-terrorism expert Ali Soufan, who suggested al-Adel would be ' al-Qaeda's next leader' last year, Saif possesses a 'poker face' and a 'caustic tongue'. With his real name thought to be Mohammed Salah al-Din Zaidan, al-Adel's made-up moniker translates to 'Sword of Justice'. With what's left of al-Qaeda now based in Afghanistan - and in coexistence with the Taliban - al-Adel's geographic isolation could stop him taking the helm, foreign policy analyst Charles Lister suggested tonight.
He told ABC News that terrorists tend to have multiple passports, with the Iranian government unable to confirm their identities. The only thing standing in his way to become the next al-Qaeda leader is that he is likely stuck in Iran - and may well have been for the past 19 years.Īl-Adel has risen to the top of al-Qaeda as much because of his own talents as by the United States' ruthlessness in killing his superiors Seven more were slain when two helicopters were shot down in the east Africa ambush, including two British soldiers, three Turks and a Frenchman.Īnd since the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011, al-Adel has become an increasingly important strategist within the depleting terror cell.
Little else is known about Saif al-Adel, who at around 60 years of age is one of the younger al-Qaeda bosses.Īl-Adel was around 30 when he oversaw the infamous 'Black Hawk Down' operation in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which 19 American soldiers were killed and had their bodies dragged through the streets. There he met future allies Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, whose separate group Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) he would soon join. The heir apparent to the al-Qaeda throne after tonight's confirmed death of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a canny, military-trained operative with experience killing British and American soldiers.Įgyptian ex-army officer Saif al-Adel was a founding member of al-Qaeda, having joined pre-cursor terrorist group Maktab al-Khidamat in the late-1980s. He is credited with masterminding the bombings of three US embassies in 1998 as well as playing a key role in the notorious 'Black Hawk Down' plot Pictured in just one of three published photos, al-Adel is the likely successor to the al-Qaeda throne.
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