UN experts said that the predominant view among member nations is that the leadership of al-Qaeda has passed to Saif al-Adel, who was responsible for Osama bin Laden’s security and trained some of the hijackers involved in the attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001.
The panel of experts said in a report to the UN Security Council circulated on Monday that no announcement has been made of al-Adel replacing Ayman al-Zawahri, who was killed by a US drone strike in Kabul in August last year.
However, “in discussions in November and December [last year], many UN member states took the view that [Saif al-Adel] is already operating as the de facto and uncontested leader of the group,” the report says.
Assessments vary as to why al-Adel’s leadership has not been declared, it said.
Some countries feel that al-Zawahri’s presence in Kabul embarrassed the country’s Taliban rulers, who are seeking legitimacy “and that al-Qaeda chose not to exacerbate this by acknowledging the death,” the experts said.
“However, most judged a key factor to be the continued presence of [Saif al-Adel] in the Islamic Republic of Iran, [which] raised difficult theological and operational questions for al-Qaeda,” they said.
While noting that one country rejected claims that any al-Qaeda affiliate is in Iran, the panel said the location of al-Adel “raises questions that have a bearing on al-Qaeda’s ambitions to assert leadership of a global movement in the face of challenges” from the Islamic State group.
Al-Adel is on the UN sanctions blacklist as Egyptian-born Mohammed Salahaldin Abd el-Halim Zidan since January 2001, the panel said.
He is described in the UN listing as taking over as military commander of al-Qaeda following the death of Mohammed Atef — one of bin Laden’s top aides — in a US attack in November 2001.
He also trained fighters who killed 18 US servicemen in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, the listing says.
Al-Adel is wanted by US authorities in connection with the August 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.
The report says that the threat from al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and their affiliates “remains high in conflict zones and neighboring countries,” with Africa emerging in the past few years “as the continent where the harm done by terrorism is developing most rapidly and extensively.”
The panel said that the Islamic State’s leadership has also become a question following the group’s Nov. 30 announcement that Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi had died in a battle the previous month, the group’s second leader to be killed last year.
“The new leader was announced as Abu al-Husain al-Husaini al-Qurashi and his true identity is not yet known,” the panel said.
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