The US military presented the new face of al-Qaeda in Iraq, displaying a photograph of a bearded man in a traditional white Arab headdress and saying he was taking over after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The new leader is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Afghanistan-trained explosives expert with links to Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Major General William Caldwell said on Thursday.
He also is the man behind a nom de guerre made public by al-Qaeda in Iraq after al-Zarqawi was killed last week in a US airstrike on his safe house outside of Baghdad, the military spokesman said.
PHOTO: AFP
However, US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said it is not certain that al-Masri is al-Zarqawi's successor.
"That's clearly one of the leading names, but we're going to need a little bit of time to sort out -- and they're clearly needing a little time -- to sort out where they go after what is clearly a big blow to al-Qaeda," Hadley said at the White House.
Caldwell said al-Masri was the man identified in an Internet posting by al-Qaeda that said Abu Hamza al-Muhajer was al-Zarqawi's successor. The name al-Muhajer means "emigrant" in Arabic and suggested he was not an Iraqi.
According to the US military, al-Masri was a founding member of al-Qaeda in Iraq. After meeting the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan, he followed him to Iraq to help set up the terror cell in 2003.
Even before the terror leader's death, the Bush administration posted a US$200,000 bounty on al-Masri because of his level of leadership within al-Qaeda, Caldwell said.
Citing recently declassified documents, he said al-Masri has been a terrorist since 1982, "beginning with his involvement in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad," which was led by Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's top deputy.
Going by that chronology, the photograph the military presented -- showing a young man with a sparse mustache and a trimmed goatee -- appeared to be at least several years old.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS