The top 5 Al Qaeda leaders still hiding in Pakistan

Osama bin Laden was not the only Al Qaeda leader hiding in Pakistan. The US believes there are others, including people on its list of Most Wanted Terrorists.

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By Ariel Zirulnick, Correspondent
posted May 3, 2011 at 2:50 pm EDT

1.Ayman al-Zawahiri

Osama Bin Laden (r.) listens to his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri on a video tape that was released on Al-Jazeera Arabic television on April 15, 2002.
(Richard B. Levine/Newscom/File)

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian citizen who founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group, is widely expected to take over for Osama bin Laden as the leader of Al Qaeda. He was already considered the group’s central ideologue and one of the brains behind the 9/11 attacks.
There is a $25 million bounty on Mr. Zawahiri’s head. With the death of Mr. bin Laden, who was also one of the original 22 people on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists released in October 2001, Zawahiri is reportedly now the world’s most-wanted living terrorist. The US has indicted him for his alleged role in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Tanzinia and Nairobi.
He went into hiding after the US overthrew the Taliban in late 2001, supposedly in the remote region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and survived a US drone strike in Pakistan in 2006.

2.Saif al-Adel

Saif al-Adel, another on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists, is an Egyptian believed to be a top-ranking member of Al Qaeda. The US is offering $5 million as a reward for his capture.
Like Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Adel was indicted by the US for an alleged role in the African embassy bombings in 1998. The BBC reports that he may now be the military commander of Al Qaeda.
Adel may have been under house arrest in Iran after fleeing there following the US invasion of Afghanistan, but intelligence reports indicate that if he was, he has since been released and possibly in Pakistan’s tribal region.

3.Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah

An Egyptian with a $5 million reward on his head, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is supposedly a member of Al Qaeda’s top council. US intelligence thinks he is in Pakistan after fleeing Nairobi following the embassy bombings.
Along with Ayman al-Zawahiri and Said al-Adel, Mr. Abdullah is wanted by the US for the African embassy bombings in 1998 and is on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists. He arranged and paid for the travel of the Al Qaeda operatives who carried out the attack, according to The Washington Post, describing him as the group’s chief financial officer.

4.Rashid Rauf

A dual British-Pakistani citizen, Rashid Rauf has been considered a key Al Qaeda operative and is suspected of involvement in a 2006 attempt to blow up aircraft leaving London with liquid explosives. He was also was wanted in Britain as a suspect in the 2002 murder of an uncle, according to The New York Times.
He was in Pakistani custody at one point, but controversially escaped in 2007 when his guards allowed him to say prayers in a mosque. The US reported that Mr. Rauf was killed in a drone attack in Pakistan in 2008, but his family continues to deny his death.

5.Ilyas Kashmiri

Ilyas Kashmiri is a Pakistani from Kashmir. While not on the FBI’s most-wanted list, he is believed to be behind some of the deadliest attacks in India and Pakistan, including a 2009 suicide attack on Pakistan’s spy agency and crossborder attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.
He is the operations chief of a group called Harakut-ul Jihad Islami, which has some 3,000 militia members and is classified by the US as a terrorist organization tied to Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Punjabi Taliban. A recent Newsweek profile – with the headline “Is Ilyas Kashmiri the New Bin Laden?” – said he “has the experience, the connections, and a determination to attack the West – including the United States—that make him the most dangerous Qaeda operative to emerge in years.”