Word: zubaydah
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...equal parts "Holy crap!" and "Hey, wait a minute - how do we know these uncorroborated threats are on the level? What's the source?" Then, Thursday, we learned that the threats to New York (like the bank and apartment threats) came from one man: Al-Qaeda COO Abu Zubaydah, whom the feds have been sweating at an undisclosed overseas location. And so, for his role as the summoner of all our fears, Abu Zubaydah is our Person of the Week...
...When the U.S. captured Zubaydah in a daring raid in Pakistan in late March it was the biggest catch of the war on al-Qaeda so far. The 31-year-old, born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian parents, was the Number 3 man on the al-Qaeda org chart. He'd been in charge of the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda taught many Europe-based Arabs. His fingerprints appear on most of the group's terrorist plots during the past few years: Zubaydah was implicated in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa; he allegedly played...
...Zubaydah, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Mohammed Husayn, grew up comfortably middle-class. In his teens he became interested in Islamic extremism, drawn there by the Palestinian cause, and by age 18 he was in Gaza as a member of Islamic Jihad. In the mid-1990s he moved to Afghanistan, and soon Osama bin Laden placed him in the border town of Peshawar, Pakistan. There, Zubaydah acted as a kind of semi-permeable membrane, passing on to al-Qaeda volunteers he deemed acceptable. As a cover, he posed as a honey merchant but nonetheless attracted notice from...
...bureau has sent word to its field offices and 56 federal terrorism task forces that they should advise local officials to tighten security around large apartment buildings, as well as busy malls, supermarkets and restaurants. The alert is a response to statements made by captured bin Laden aide Abu Zubaydah. According to sources, Abu Zubaydah told interrogators that al-Qaeda operatives were discussing attacks on "soft targets," meaning nongovernmental buildings and places where large numbers of Americans gather. Although investigators remain leery of anything Abu Zubaydah says, they don't want to discount his remarks entirely. So instead of issuing...
...shopping malls and supermarkets. Beyond the increasingly pessimistic analysis on the part of U.S. officials, the impetus for the latest warning--quieter than the one four days earlier alerting Americans to possible attacks on Eastern-seaboard banks--was bolstered by comments from captured al-Qaeda strategist Abu Zubaydah, the source for the previous bank warning. Arabic-speaking CIA and FBI personnel continue to interrogate Abu Zubaydah at a secret overseas U.S. facility. They are now considering the possibility that Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian, may have studied the campaign in Israel and urged al-Qaeda cell members to emulate...