Al-Qaida: Dead or captured

--Oct. 12, 2003

Fathur al-Ghozi, a bombmaker for the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, is killed in a shootout with a joint Philippine police-military team.  One of Asia’s most-wanted terror suspects, al-Ghozi was shot when security forces tried to stop a van with two men on board in the southern town of Pigkawayan.  The death of al Ghozi, an Indonesian, ended a massive three-month manhunt launched after his stunning escape from Philippine police headquarters in Manila.

--Nov. 25, 2003

Mohammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, also known as Abu Asem al-Macci, is captured in Yemen.   He is described as a "senior al Qaeda affiliated facilitator" in Yemen, who was apparently not picked up with US help.   Press accounts over the past  year have identified him as the successor to the top al Qaeda figure in Yemen, Qaed Salim Sunian al-Harithi. The CIA killed al-Harithi last November 2 with a Hellfire missile fired from a unmanned Predator drone.  He is "possibly" related to the attack on the USS Cole in Oct 2000 that killed 17 US sailors, say US intelligence officials.  Owner of al Hamati Sweets and al-Nur Honey, Al-Hamati operated out of  the Hadramat Governate of Yemen.  Al-Nur was located in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital.

--June 12, 2004

Mussad Aruchi, an Al-Qaeda operative linked to a June 10 attack on a Pakistani corps commander that killed 11 soldiers, is captured in Karachi, the first in a series of interconnected raids and arrests that ultimately leads two months later to the raising of the US threat level from yellow to orange for US financial institutions.

Aruchi is the nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the September 11 attacks in the United States and cousin of Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His arrest was supervised by the CIA which provided crucial information on his location, Pakistani intelligence sources said.

--June 18, 2004

Abdul Aziz al Muqrin, "leader of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia", is killed in Riyadh while disposing the body of Paul M. Johnson, Jr., a Lockheed Martin engineer who had been kidnapped six days earlier. 

According to Saudi authorities, he was the mastermind of the May and November suicide bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia, in which 53 people died, including nine Americans. His fighting experience began at age 17 when he went to Afghanistan to battle Soviet troops, linking up with both Saudis and other Muslims.  Al Muqrin later joined the war in Bosnia and in 1999 was sent to serve with a clandestine cell in East Africa.  He, too, spent time in a Saudi prison, where he learned the Koran by heart and was released because of good behavior just before September 11.  He was believed to be close to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

Al Muqrin was also believed to have helped establish front groups, such as the Brigade of the Two Mosques, to undermine the Saudi royal family. Saudi authorities recently acknowledged having discovered a number of camps outside Saudi cities used for training militants to carry out terror operations.

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