Alleged terrorist, Adnan el-Shukrijumah, who has Guyanese citizenship, is the new head of al-Qaeda global operations, a US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official has told the Associated Press (AP).
Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told AP in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah is on the US list of Most Wanted Terrorists and a reward of up to US$5M has been offered for information leading directly to his capture. According to the bulletin on the FBI’s website, Shukrijumah is wanted for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction; providing material support to a foreign terrorist organisation; conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation; receiving military-type training from a foreign terrorist organisation; conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries; attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and use of destructive device.
Shukrijumah was indicted in the Eastern District of New York in July for his alleged role in a terrorist plot to attack targets in the United States and the United Kingdom. The charges reveal that the plot against New York City’s subway system, uncovered in September of 2009, was directed by senior al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, and was also directly related to a scheme by al-Qaeda plotters in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United States. Shukrijumah is thought to have served as one of the leaders of al-Qaeda’s external operations program. The indictment marked the first criminal charges against Shukrijumah, who previously had been sought only as a witness.
The bulletin says that Shukrijumah holds Guyanese citizenship and occasionally wears a beard. He has a pronounced nose and is asthmatic. He speaks English and carries a Guyanese passport, but may attempt to enter the United States with a Saudi, Canadian, or Trinidadian passport, according to the bulletin.
In a report yesterday, AP said that Shukrijumah lived for more than 15 years in the US and his ascension to chief of the terror network’s global operations marks the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks. 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 has been searching for Shukrijumah since 2003. He is thought to be the only al-Qaida leader to have once held permanent U.S. resident status, or a green card, AP reported.
Apart from his July indictment, 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, but LeBlanc said no direct link has yet emerged. 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, according to the AP.
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. It’s natural he would focus on attacking the U.S., LeBlanc said. “He knows how the system works. He knows how to get a driver’s licence. He knows how to get a passport,” LeBlanc told AP. The FBI has released an age-enhanced photo of what he may look like today.
JFK plot
While local authorities had indicated that an investigation would have been launched following the international arrest warrant for the Saudi Arabian-born man there were never any publicized findings of such an investigation.
It is believed that it was Shukrijumah’s reported presence in Guyana that propelled US authorities to send informant Steven Francis to Guyana in an attempt to lure the elusive terrorist into the trap of plotting to blow up the JFK airport in New York.
Reports are that while he was in Guyana, Shukrijmumah was once safe and secure under the protection of Swiss House Cambio boss Farouk Razac, who died in May 2007 under mysterious circumstances at his home. According to reports Shukrijumah was spotted at the Swiss House Cambio by several witnesses, including self-proclaimed death squad informant George Bacchus. Bacchus himself was gunned down in 2006 following his many public statements about the existence and operation of a death squad.
And it was at the cambio he also allegedly became acquainted with Abdul Nur who recently pleaded guilty to plotting to attack the JFK airport. Nur ran errands for Razac and Kadir. Kadir was convicted last week in the JFK plot case.
The assumption by federal authorities that they might have lured Shukrijumah out of hiding was wrong as he failed to appear at any of the planning sessions in Trinidad and Guyana, and the federal officials were left only with a hefty bill.
Reports are that Shukrijumah’s father Gulshair was born in Guyana, where his grandfather Mohammad Jumah ran a general store. One of eleven children, Gulshair developed an interest in Arabic and began working as a tailor.
At the age of 32, he moved to Cairo where he studied at the al-Azhar University, and then Medina, where he enrolled at al-Madina al Manawarah (The Islamic University of Medina) and became steeped in the writings of Ibn Taymiyah and Sayyid Qutb.
In Saudi Arabia, Gulshair taught at several madrassahs, and at the age of 42 met and married Mareed Zubrah Abu Akmed.
Two years later, on August 4, 1975, Mareed gave birth to their first child Adnan. Three more children were born to the couple before the family moved to Trinidad, where Gulshair received a monthly stipend of $1,500 from the Saudi government to spread the doctrine of Wahhabism. The family later moved to the US.
Akmed, told AP on Thursday on the front step of her small home in suburban Miramar, Florida, 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,” she told AP.
New charges
LeBlanc said the new charges were brought after the New York subway bomb suspects identified him to investigators as their al-Qaeda superior. The New York suspects provided other key information about his al-Qaeda status. “It was basically Adnan who convinced them to come back to the United States and do this attack,” LeBlanc said. “His ability to manipulate someone like that and direct that, I think it speaks volumes.”
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, New York.
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, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage, AP said.
While still in Afghanistan, Shukrijumah 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, according to interrogations of Padilla and other al-Qaida 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. “They just couldn’t get along. It’s like two guys that could not work together,” LeBlanc told the AP.
The FBI is still hoping to bring charges in South Florida against Shukrijumah, but key information about him was provided by Guantanamo Bay detainees such as Mohammed, whose use as a witness would be difficult. “For us, it’s never been a dry hole. It’s always been an active investigation and it’s global in nature,” LeBlanc said. “We have never stopped working it.”
CNN, who also spoke with Shukrijumah’s mother, quoted her as saying that the authorities are using her son as a scapegoat. “That is not my son. My son is not a violent person. He is very kind, generous,” she said. On 9/11, his mother said he called home for the last time. “He called me and he said, ‘Did you hear what happened with so and so and so?’ He said, ‘They’re putting it on the Muslims. I said, ‘yes.’“
She told CNN that she told him not to come home. “And he was arguing with me. He said, ‘No, I didn’t do nothing. I will come, don’t worry about this,’“ she recalled. After that, she said, she never heard from him again.
Akmed adamantly denies her son is directing al Qaeda attacks. But when asked by CNN about Faisal Shahzad — who has pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges in the attempted car bomb attack in Times Square in May — she says that sometimes “you have to do something very alarming for the people to wake up.”
“It’s not because you hate them or you want to destroy them or you want to hurt them,” she told CNN. When asked if she has a message to send her son, she said she has nothing to say. “He [has] his own guide in his own heart,” she said.
The FBI believes Shukrijumah is likely in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region of Waziristan, CNN reported.
