Saif al-Islam al-Masri

Saif al-Islam al-Masri (Arabic: سيف الإسلام المصري) (also known as Abu Islam and Abu Islam al Masry)^[1] is the name of an Egyptian lawyer who joined Al-Qaeda,^[1] and who was active in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Chechnya and Georgia.

The name is probably, but not certainly, a nom de guerre; Saif al-Islam means Sword of Islam and al-Masri means the Egyptian, but either or both could be a real name. Al-Masri's name has been mentioned in reports on Al-Qaeda operations during the 1990s and until 2002, when he was reportedly captured and transmitted to U.S. custody.

Saif al-Islam was a trainer at,^[2] and perhaps the Emir (leader) of,^[3] the Jihad Wal training camp near Khost, Afghanistan in 1992. He was then a member of Al-Qaeda's military committee.^[2] In 1993, on the orders of Mohammed Atef, he left from Peshawar, Pakistan to Somalia at the head of an Al-Qaeda team.^[4]

At some point in the early 1990s, according to Jamal al-Fadl, there was a meeting in the Riyadh neighbourhood of Khartoum, Sudan including Osama bin Laden (who lived nearby), a Sudanese scholar named Ahmed Abdel Rahman Hamadabi, and an Iranian scholar named Nomani, who was an emissary of his government.^[2] Al-Fadl testified that a joint orientation of Sunni and Shia Muslims toward fighting the West was discussed. According to the 9/11 Commission, discussions in Khartoum "in late 1991 or 1992" led to an agreement between Iran and Al-Qaeda to cooperate "in providing support-even if only training-for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States."^[5]

Subsequently, Saif al-Islam, Saif al-Adel, two other operatives known as Abu Jaffer al-Masry and Salem al-Masry (all four being definitively or impliedly Egyptian), and one Abu Talha al-Sudani were trained by Hezbollah, in Lebanon, in the use of explosives, including "how to explosives [sic.] big buildings."^[2]

Saif al-Islam was reported to have fought against American forces in Somalia,^[6] but it is not clear from sources referring specifically to the fighting in Somalia at that time that he participated in combat directly. Al-Qaida's main contributions "were in the fields of training and financing," with members also involved as "advisors on the political and strategic level."^[4] He was an addressee of some of the letters sent by Al-Qaeda leaders to "the Africa corps," i.e. Al-Qaeda activists in Somalia.^[7]

He was in Grozny, Chechnya by 1998,^[3] when he served as an officer of the Chechnya branch of the charity Benevolence International Foundation,^[1] later designated by the United States as a financier of terrorism.^[8] At the time, Grozny was the capital of the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

In early October 2002,^[9][6] or according to another report that summer,^[10] Al-Islam was one of fifteen men captured in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, in a joint operation by Georgian and American Special Forces. Saif al-Islam had been a member of al-Qaeda's majlis al-shura (consultative council)^[6][8] and its military committee.^[10][2] Following his arrest, the Georgian authorities reportedly handed him over to the American government.^[9] It is not clear what happened to him since.

The operation in which al-Masri was captured was one of the final acts of the Pankisi Gorge crisis.