AFP/Sanaa


Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula yesterday confirmed the death in a US drone strike of its deputy leader Saeed al-Shehri, dealing a new blow to the already-weakened network’s operations in Yemen.
Shehri was released from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2007 and was flown to Saudi Arabia, where he was put through a rehabilitation programme.
After completing the programme, the militant leader disappeared only to resurface later as AQAP’s number two.
“Sheikh Saeed al-Shehri, aka Abu Sufyan al-Azdi, was killed in a US drone strike,” said an AQAP leader, Ibrahim al-Rubaish, in a video posted on Islamist websites yesterday.
Rubaish, who gave no indication of when Shehri was killed, said that “lax security measures during his telephone contacts has enabled the enemy to (identify and) kill him”.
In a eulogy to Shehri, he said he had “planned the kidnap of the Saudi deputy consul in Aden”, Abdullah al-Khalidi, who has been held captive by AQAP since March 2012.
AQAP militants are demanding the release of female Al Qaeda-linked prisoners held in Saudi in return for Khalidi’s release.
Shehri had been hounded by Yemen’s security forces and had survived a number of attempts on his life.
His death had been announced several times by the Yemeni authorities, most recently on January 24.
In April, AQAP released an audio message purported to be a newly-delivered address by Shehri.
Last October, Shehri himself denied a September announcement by Yemen’s defence ministry that he had been killed in an army raid, in an audio message posted on extremist Internet forums.
An official Yemeni statement in January called him “one of the (Al Qaeda) leaders who played a major role in the planning of local, regional and international terrorist acts”.
It said he was “the military commander of terrorist elements” during deadly clashes with the army in the southern Abyan province, which Islamist rebels largely controlled for a year before Yemeni forces recaptured it in June 2012.
AQAP took advantage of the weakness of Yemen’s central government during an uprising in 2011 against now-ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh to seize large swathes of territory across the south.
But after a month-long offensive launched in May last year by Yemeni troops, most militants fled to the more lawless desert regions of the east towards Hadramout province.
“AQAP has reduced its operations for two reasons: it is restructuring after having lost its stronghold in Abyan, and a feeling that the Americans have infiltrated its ranks especially with the killing of several of its leaders,” said a tribal chief, known for his close contacts with members of the network.
Yemeni-born American radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, a key figure in AQAP, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.
A few months later, Yemeni Al Qaeda leader Fahd al-Quso, who was believed to have helped mount a deadly attack on a US warship in a Yemeni port in 2000, was killed in an air raid attributed to the US.
In March, the weakened AQAP whose operations have been restricted over the past few months to hit-and-run attacks against members of the security forces, accepted a negotiated truce with Sanaa, proposed by tribal and religious figures.
But Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi had rejected these efforts, insisting that the militants must lay down their arms.
AQAP has not yet announced who will succeed Shehri.
“It is will certainly not be a Yemeni and the name of Ibrahim al-Rubaish is cited as a possible choice to replace Shehri,” the tribal chief said.
Rubaish, a Saudi like Shehri, is also a former Guantanamo prisoner who fled to Yemen after being repatriated to Saudi Arabia.
He is believed to be the mastermind behind providing AQAP, the network’s deadliest branch, theological justification for its operations.
AQAP is led by Nasser al-Wuhayshi, who in July 2011 reaffirmed the group’s allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahri, head of the worldwide Al Qaeda network since the killing in May 2011 of its founder, Osama bin Laden.
The US has stepped up its support for Yemen’s battle against AQAP, which it regards as the most active and deadliest franchise of the global Al Qaeda network.
US drones strikes in Yemen nearly tripled in 2012 compared to 2011, from 18 to 53, according to the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.