AQAP´s Religious Leader Ibrahim al-Rubaish Seen In New Video

by Florian Flade

AQAP´s Religious Authority – Ibrahim al-Rubaish

O sea, give me news of my loved ones.

Were it not for the chains of the faithless, I would have dived into you,
And reached my beloved family, or perished in your arms.

Your beaches are sadness, captivity, pain, and injustice.
Your bitterness eats away at my patience.

Your calm is like death, your sweeping waves are strange.
The silence that rises up from you holds treachery in its fold.

Your stillness will kill the captain if it persists,
And the navigator will drown in your waves.

Gentle, deaf, mute, ignoring, angrily storming,
You carry graves.

If the wind enrages you, your injustice is obvious.
If the wind silences you, there is just the ebb and flow.

O sea, do our chains offend you?
It is only under compulsion that we daily come and go.

Do you know our sins?
Do you understand we were cast into this gloom?

O sea, you taunt us in our captivity.
You have colluded with our enemies and you cruelly guard us.

Don’t the rocks tell you of the crimes committed in their midst?
Doesn’t Cuba, the vanquished, translate its stories for you?

You have been beside us for three years, and what have you gained?
Boats of poetry on the sea; a buried flame in a burning heart.

The poet’s words are the font of our power;
His verse is the salve for our pained hearts.

This poem was written by a former Guantánamo Bay prisoner No.192 named Ibrahim Sulaiman Mohammad al-Rubaish who is now acting as a spiritual leader within the terrorist network of Al-Qaida in Yemen. The 32 year-old Saudi had been captured at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in late 2001 shortly after the battle of Tora Bora. He allegedly was an Al-Qaida fighter back then who was trained at Al-Qaida´s Al-Farooq camp in Afghanistan.

Al-Rubaish was sent to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay and held there till he was transferred back to his home country of Saudi-Arabia on December 13 2006. Born in the conservative region of Buridah in 1980, Ibrahim al-Rubaish graduated from the Imam Mohammad Bin Saud University in Shariah law before he went to Afghanistan and joined Al-Qaida.

In Saudi-Arabia al-Rubaish entered the rehabilitation program for Jihadi militants created by the Saudi interior ministry. Before he finished the program, Al-Rubaish disappeared in Spring 2008. He traveled to Yemen and along with 11 other former Saudi Guantánamo prisoners joined Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leaving behind his wife and three children. Shortly after his disappearance Al-Rubaish´s name appeared on the “85 Most Wanted” list of terrorists wanted by the Saudi authorities.

For the first time Al-Qaida in Yemen presented the former Guantánamo prisoner as a high-ranking Jihadi leader by releasing a audio tape titled “Why Mohammad Bin Nayif?” in which he justified the assassination attempt on the Saudi interior minister and member of the royal family, Prince Mohammed Bin Nayif carried out by an Al-Qaida suicide bomber in September 2009.

Several other audio messages by Al-Rubaish followed since then, all of them dealing mainly with religious and Shariah based topics. Within a few years the former Guantánamo inmate rose to the ranks of a prominent religious ideologue and spiritual leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

For the first time Ibrahim al-Rubaish appears in the latest propaganda tape released by AQAP – “One Ummah”.

Meet The Not-So-Dead Terrorist

by Florian Flade

________________________________________________

Can the dead speak? Sometimes they can, and they are happy to do so. Latest example: al-Qaeda operational figure Fahd Muhammad Ahmad al-Quso. The Yemeni militant is accused of having played a major role in the suicide bombing on the American Navy destroyer USS Cole in Aden on October 12th 2000. Seventeen US sailors died that day when a boot packed with explosives was rammed into the ship and detonated.

Al-Quso was put on the FBI´s Most Wanted-List for his involvement in the attack planning and of being a senior al-Qaeda figure who was trained in Afghanistan and had been in contact with some of the 9/11 hijackers. A 5-Million US Dollar-Bounty was on his head.

In 2003 al-Quso was arrested by Yemeni security forces but escaped prison, only to be re-arrested in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for the USS Cole Bombing case. US officials were shocked when Yemeni authorities decided to grant Fahd al-Quso an early release in 2007. As expected, the al-Qaeda member rejoined the organization and in late 2009 gave an interview to Al-Jazeera after an airstrike targeted a village in which al-Quso reportedly had stayed in.

The last time al-Quso appeared in public was when al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released a propaganda tape in May of this year, praising the failed Underwear-Bomber Omar Farouq Abdulmutallab. Wearing a camouflage military uniform, al-Quso spoke in the video and threatened more attacks on Western targets.

By October the wanted al-Qaeda man had travelled to Pakistan and joined al-Qaeda´s network in the Waziristan area – at least that´s what media and Pakistani officials said. In October German Press Agency DPA quoted Pakistani intelligence sources as saying a CIA drone attack on a car in North Waziristan had killed Fahd al-Quso and other al-Qaeda commanders.

“According to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur report, the Yemeni terrorist – who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list for his role in al Qaeda’s October 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors – was recently killed by a U.S. missile in Pakistan. Terrorism experts, however, doubt the report, and it’s more likely that Quso is still operational in Yemen.”

As it turns out, DPA was dead wrong on the not-so-dead terrorist. Fahd al-Quso is alive and he lived in the mountains of Yemen´s Shabwa Province. Yemeni journalist Arafat Mudabish of Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Aswat met al-Quso in his mountain hideout where village tribesmen are protecting the al-Qaeda man from the barely-in-control Yemeni military. A picture printed by the newspaper shows Fahd al-Quso alias “Abu Hudaifa” sitting next to Mudabish, wearing again the military uniform he also wore in the May propaganda tape.

Asked what he thinks about the rumors of his death in a Waziristan drone attack, al-Quso said these reports surprised him given “the situation in Yemen, which is similar to the situation in Pakistan.” If the Yemeni government ever presented him with the offer to surrender, the journalist asked al-Quso. Surrendering would mean giving up religion and everything al-Qaeda fights for, the terrorist said. That´s why this manner will never be discussed.

Fear Is Cheap – AQAP & The Parcel Bomb Plot

by Florian Flade

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“If your opponent covers his right cheek, slap him on his left”

- al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) states in its latest issue of the English-language Online Magazine “Inspire” releases last night. It is a special issues highlighting new details about the failed package bomb plot in October. Never before has a terrorist group laid out why the obvious failure of an attack was still regarded as a great success because of the reaction by those targeted.

AQAP provided the reader with new information about the actual explosive devices as well as about the motives and intentions behind the parcel bombs sent to Chicago synagogues. While the West was shocked it still called the plot a “failed attempt” to down Western cargo planes with bombs hidden in a laser printer and a printer cartridge AQAP is cheering about their interpretation of success in this latest propaganda document.

“For our enemies to think that intercepting such a package is evidence of their success is truly ridiculous” – AQAP propaganda staff writes -”this supposedly “foiled plot”, as some of our enemies would like to call, will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures.”

“We will continue with similar operations and we do not mind at all in this stage if they are intercepted” – the Jihadis warn – “It is such a good bargain for us to spread fear amongst the enemy…in exchange of a few months of work and a few thousand bucks.”

AQAP claims the whole cost for the plot they call “Operation Hemorrhage” was just a few thousand dollars. “Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200″ – the new al-Qaeda Magazine says – “A $4,200 operation will cost our enemy billions of dollars.”

Causing fear and Wester countries to spend billions for new bomb detection systems to check international mail therefore was the real intention of AQAP. And this was indeed achieved even without the bombs actually detonating.

“From the start our objective was economic” – al-Qaeda describes the plot – “Bringing down a cargo plane would only kill a pilot and co-pilot. It is true that blowing up the planes in the sky would add to the element of fear and shock but that would have been an additional advantage to the operation and not a determining factor of its success.”

Nevertheless the explosive devices were meant to explode and had been designed to penetrate the regular detection system at commercial airmail centers. A militant named Ikrimah al-Muhajir (indicating he is a Non-Yemeni), explains the technical details of the bombs: “We used a device that contains organic, non-organic material, and metals. The toner cartridge contains the toner which is carbon based and that is an organic material. The carbon’s molecular number is close to that of PETN. We emptied the toner cartridge from its contents and filled it with 340 grams of PETN. We then inserted the detonator. We designed the detonator to be short so that it wouldn’t be detected and we filled it with 4 grams of Lead Azide.”

“If inspected the toner could be pulled out and would look normal without any wires sticking out. This method makes human inspection of the printer useless”, AQAP claims and presents new images showing the HP laser printer prior to sending it via mail. Because of this design and the lack of security in airmail transportation, the bomb packages even made from Yemen where al-Qaeda handed them over to FedEx and UPS staff to Dubai and even the United Kingdom before being intercepted.

“The packages not only made it out of Sanaa but one of them made it all the way to London and if it was not for an intelligence tip, both devices would have detonated” – AQAP writes. Their initial targets were Jewish synagogues in the U.S.. AQAP even gives a reason why they choose especially the city of Chicago: “Both synagogues are in Chicago, Obama’s city.”

Further the new AQAP paper lists several questions presented to the reader. One of them reads “Isn´t it funny how America thinks AQAP has only one bomb maker?” The man who´s name was mentioned shortly after the intercepted bomb packages, as the possible bomb maker in the parcel plot case, is Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. Al-Asiri, a Saudi most-wanted al-Qaeda member, is said to head AQAP´s bomb-building classes. His own brother, Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri carried out the failed suicide bombing against Saudi interior minister Prince Mohammed Nayef in 2009.

“Our brother Ibrahim al-Asiri is safe and well and he is currently busy teaching a new batch of students the latest in bomb making skills” – AQAP states in the new magazine, answering the question brought up by a CNN anchorman in October.

In my mind, the new al-Qaeda “Inspire” issue is not really a big surprise. Its layout, the language and whole appearance is an indication this magazine again was produced by American Samir Khan – AQAP´s chief editor.
There is nothing really new in it except from the detail information that “less than six” AQAP men planning and carried out the parcel bomb plot, the overall alleged cost of the attack attempt and the three-month-plotting phase.

Interesting to note is the fact that AQAP willingly confirms the media report that Saudi intelligence gave crucial information about the bomb plot to US and European partner and thereby interception was possible and the attack failed.