Saeed al-Masri
Encyclopedia
Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid (مصطفى أحمد محمد عثمان أبو اليزيد), better known as Saeed al-Masri (سعيد المصري) or simply al-Masri (المصري = the Egyptian), (December 17, 1955 – May 21, 2010) was an Egyptian
Egyptians
Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...

 who was alleged to have acted as the financial chief for al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...

. Along with Abu Hafs al-Mauritani and Saif al-Adl, al-Masri was believed to have opposed the September 11 attacks two months prior to their execution. He was killed in a targeted killing
Targeted killing
Targeted killing is the deliberate, specific targeting and killing, by a government or its agents, of a supposed terrorist or of a supposed "unlawful combatant" who is not in that government's custody...

 drone airstrike in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 on May 21, 2010.

In Pakistan

He was initially arrested among hundreds of others following the assassination of Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981...

 in 1981. He was imprisoned for three years in Egypt, and shortly after he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and in 1988 went to Afghanistan. He had two wives and several sons and daughters, including one married to the son of Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman.

As of 1991, al-Masri was working as the financial chief for al-Qaeda, running the Mektabh al-Muhassiba (accounting office) in Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....

. He was alleged to have appointed Ibrahim al-Qosi as his deputy to handle money destined for NGO projects.

In the Sudan

al-Masri set up a financial office on McNimr Street in Khartoum
Khartoum
Khartoum is the capital and largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia. The location where the two Niles meet is known as "al-Mogran"...

 on June 9, 1993, from where he managed al-Qaeda's payroll. al-Fadl aided al-Masri until he was replaced by Abu Dijana al-Yemeni and Abdallah Lubnani.

After receiving his pilot license, L'Houssaine Kherchtou
L'Houssaine Kherchtou
L'Houssaine Kherchtou was an early initiate in al-Qaeda, joining the militant group in 1991. In 2000, he pled guilty to conspiracy to murder, but as he was the chief witness against four of his former colleagues, all of whom were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment, his charges were...

 returned to the Sudan in December 1995, but was appalled to find that his wife, heavily pregnant and in need of $500 for a cesarean section, was begging on the streets for money to allow her entrance to Khartoum's general hospital. Kherchtou went to al-Masri and asked him to cover his wife's medical bills, and was upset upon being informed there was no money to spare and al-Masri suggested he take her to a Muslim charitable hospital for free treatment. He angrily demanded to know "if it was your wife or your daughter, you would take her there", and later recounted that he was angry enough he would have shot al-Masri if he had a gun at the time.

Return to Pakistan, claims of death

In May 2007, al-Masri released a video promising Americans that al-Qaeda troops had been training through the winter and were ready to begin a fresh summer offensive in Afghanistan.

In December, al-Masri was said to have claimed responsibility for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto
Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto occurred on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Bhutto, twice Prime Minister of Pakistan and then-leader of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, had been campaigning ahead of elections due in January 2008...

, telling Adnkronos International that "we terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...

". The Asia Times Online
Asia Times Online
Asia Times Online is a bilingual English‒Chinese, Internet-based newspaper covering geopolitics, politics, economics and business "from an Asian perspective"...

 also reported that it had received a claim of responsibility from al-Masri by telephone.

al-Masri allowed himself to be interviewed on Geo Television in July 2008 following the Danish embassy bombing
2008 Danish embassy bombing
The 2008 Danish embassy bombing was an attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan on June 2, 2008. The suspected suicide car bombing in the parking lot of the embassy took place at around 12:10 pm , killing at least five and wounding many more. The Danish national security...

, which he claimed were carried out by a Saudi follower of al-Qaeda.

Pakistan's DAWN
Dawn (newspaper)
Dawn is Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper. One of the country's two largest English-language dailies, it is the flagship of the Dawn Group of Newspapers, published by Pakistan Herald Publications, which also owns the Herald, a magazine, the evening paper The Star and...

 reported him killed on August 13, 2008 in an airstrike in Bajaur
Bajaur
Bajaur or Bajur or Bajour is an Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Smallest of the agencies in FATA, it has a hilly terrain. According to the 1998 census, the population was 595,227 but other more recent estimates it has grown to 757,000...

. Tehrik-i-Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar
Maulvi Omar
Maulvi Said Muhammad, better known as Maulvi Omar or Maulvi Umar, is a senior Taliban commander who was captured by the Pakistani security forces in August 2009. Omar, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan , was a close associate of Baitullah Mehsud...

, himself captured five days after the attack, denied the claim that al-Masri had been killed. Others suggested that the report of his death was a Pakistani attempt to refute recent American accusations that sections of the ISI
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...

 were still assisting al-Qaeda.

On February 9, 2009 the Indian government received a video from al-Yazid in which he reiterated the promise of Pakistani retaliation if India launched a first strike
First strike
In nuclear strategy, a first strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing...

. This video took everyone by surprise as he was presumed to be dead.

Confirmed Death

He was reported as having been killed in a US drone attack
Drone attacks in Pakistan
The United States government, led by the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division, has made a series of attacks on targets in northwest Pakistan since 2004 using drones . These attacks are part of the US' War on Terrorism campaign, seeking to defeat Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants...

in Pakistan on May 21, 2010 along with his wife and three children. His death was confirmed by US officials and al-Qaeda.

External links

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