Abou Moussab Al-Zarqaoui (in Arab: أبومصعبالزرقاوي ), (born the 20 or the October 30th 1966 with Zarqa in Jordan and dead the June 7th 2006 with Bakouba in Iraq), of Jordanian origin, is a terrorist Islamiste, person in charge for Al-Qaida of the area of Iraq in the emirate djihadist decentralized the Middle East.
Biography
Ahmed Fadel Nazzal Al-Khalayleh , is more known under its pseudonym Abou Moussab Al-Zarqaoui . From sunnite confession, it was born probably the October 20th or the October 30th 1966, with Zarqa in Jordan, from where its patronym of war. " Abou Moussab" is a reference to Moussab Ben Omar, companion of the prophet Mahomet and died in 625 with the Bataille of Ouhoud.
Its youth
It grew in a phratry of seven sisters and three brothers, raised by a mother with the hearth and a father municipal employee. Its family belongs to the clan of the Khalayleh , of the tribe of the Bani Hassan . They are Bedouins disseminated through all the the Middle East, in particular in Syria and Iraq and which will be used to him later as faithful and devoted network.
The municipality of Zarka constitutes a very poor industrial city which counts nearly eight hundred and thousand inhabitants whose many Palestinian refugees, made for the first as of after the Nakba of 1948 and who transformed the city of the Années 1970 into an important center of Palestinian resistance.
It is in this context that Zarkaoui makes its training of the life in the street. Was it influenced by the cemetery which its room overhung and in which he played as of more the young age? Always it is that Zarkaoui, of intermediate size, but squat and strapping man, watch very early a temperament coleric and brawler, even morbid. It would have started by living of minor delinquency and of many larcenies are with its credit. Become small a caïd of the street, he drank alcohol and its body was covered so much with tattooings which he was called “the green man”. It badgered the girls and at age the 17 years, it is stopped for Viol by the Jordanian police force.
Sent by his parents in a Koranic school, in order to try to leave it the Delinquency, it meets there especially Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian professor who was also the first mentor of Bin Laden. From this meeting, it will discover the ideology of the Djihad and soon as much from other young Moslems it will leave for the camps the Afghanistan.
Its first stay in Afghanistan
Towards the end of the Years 1980, Ahmed Fadel Nazzal leaves to make the Djihad during the war of Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, where with the other Jordanian ones, it takes part in the seat of Khost.
However, the war is practically finished and after the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1989, it leaves towards Peshawar, Pakistani frontier town and refuge of all the moudjahidins which wished to continue the combat. In this city, it meets Abou Mohamed Al-Makdissi, a religious academic, who will take it under his cut. This last finds to him an employment in a newspaper salafist in which it brings back the feats of arms of the islamist combatants.
Its return in Jordan
End 1992, it returns in its native land, the Jordan, accompanied by Abou Mohamed Al-Makdissi with an aim of founding their own salafist group. Thanks to their contacts with the islamist networks, they found quickly the Beyt Al-Imam. But the Jordanian intelligence services take care and they are quickly located. In 1993, before even being able to pass to the action, they are both decrees and imprisoned, after one had found in Ahmed Fadel Nazzal of the weapons and the explosives at the time of an investigation into the islamist networks in the kingdom.
Condemned to fifteen years of prison for detention of weapons and falsification of passports, it will have time to study the Coran, until memorizing the six thousand verses of them. From now on, ashamed from its past of minor offender, it will try to erase its tattooings with acid whose burns will leave him unpleasant scars on all its body. In addition, its charisma and its reputation of war veteran of Afghanistan, his new religious enthusiasm, enable him to reign on an small group of delinquents who surround it he becomes the chief. He starts to bear his new name of djihadist: Abou Moussab Al-Zarqaoui.
It is released in 1999, at the time of an amnesty issued at the time of the crowning of the new king Abdallah II of Jordan. But, Al-Zarkaoui takes again its activities and projects, for the passage to the year 2000, an bomb attack against a large hotel of the capital Amman. However, supervised by the police force, its plan is discovered and it must flee towards the Pakistan in company of his mother, country in which she will die in 2004.
Its second stay in Afghanistan
With the Pakistan, it renews contact with the islamist networks and it is at that time that it meets Bin Laden for the first time. But their history, their motivations and their ambitions are different almost paradoxical. Bin Laden is a son of billionaire, having had a childhood of rich man, twenty years of experience of engagements in Afghanistan and its adhesion with the Djihad is even older. Their enemies are also different, for Bin Laden they are the Saoudi princes and American, for Al-Zarkaoui they are the Israelis and the kingdom of Jordan.
It turns over then to Afghanistan, during the period Taliban E, but not wishing to remain with Bin Laden with Kandahar, it prefers to assemble its own camp of drive in the area of Herat, in the extreme south-west of the country, with a hundred men, as a majority of the Palestinians and the Jordanian ones. He baptizes his group, Tawhid wal Djihad ( Unification and Holy war ). To this time, its identification by the experts goes back from the services anti-terrorists, but it then seems to be in competition with Al-Qaida.
With the autumn 2001, when American and their allies, start to them intervention against the mode of the talibans, Al-Zarkaoui and its band passes in Iran where according to various services of Renseignement, the authorities brought a logistical support and financial to him. Some time later, conscious of the possibilities offered by the geography of the Iraqi Kurdistan to establish a hearth of Djihad, it settles in the north of Iraq near a group called Ansar Al-Islam with which it would have maintained the bonds as of the years. It puts technical capabilities of its team trained at Hérat at the disposal of this terrorist group.
Its activity in Iraq
October 28th, 2002, Al-Zarqaoui makes assassinate with Amman, Lawrence Foley, an American diplomat, to see the section Assassinat of Lawrence Foley . For that, he is condemned to died by contumance and a mandate of international stop is delivered against him.
February 5th, 2003, Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State denounces the presence of Al-Zarkaoui and the Tawhid wal Djihad on the Iraqi territory, like the preuvre of the collusion between the president Saddam Hussein and Islamic terrorism, affirming publicly that Al-Zarkaoui is the liaison officer between Oussama ben Laden and Saddam Hussein, but this assumption was not confirmed, however according to the experts of the CIA the mode covered it.
Convinced, of an imminent invasion of Iraq by the American forces and their allies it prepares his organization with resistance, installing masks and organizing islamist networks around dormant cells combatants with Baghdad and in the areas of obedience Sunnite.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein, to ensure her survival, he seeks to be introduced into the mediums of resistance baasist, with like objective initiating a Djihad, at the same time against American and their allies, but also against the Iraqi Chiites.
In fact, as of on August 19th, 2003, it is able to begin its Dijhad while exploding the building sheltering the personnel of UNO in the middle of Baghdad, causing the death of 22 people of which the representative of the United Nations, Brazilian the Sergio Vieira of Mello). August 29th, 2003, the attack against the mosque of Ali to Nadjaf, Shiite holy city, eighty-five fact victims.
May 11th, 2004, it makes diffuse by Internet, a video showing the decapitation of a young American hostage, Nicholas Berg, to see the section Meurtre of Nick Berg . Starting from this event, it will be called the “lion of Mésopotamie” or the “prince of Al-Qaida in Iraq”.
The attacks without end perpetrated by its organization generate chaos and make very many victims. The Shiites and the Americans become objective allies. In July 2004, its organization sudden of heavy losses at the time of the seat of Falloujah and even Al-Zarkaoui failed to be taken. It could escape while jumping from its record player moving to avoid accuracy a stopping held by the navy American.
Chief of Al-Qaida in Iraq
October 19th, 2004, its grouping, the Tawhid wal Djihad is recognized by Bin Laden like the “ relay of Al-Qaida in Mésopotamie ”, to see '' fusion between Al-Tawhid and Al-Qaida ''. Become their “enemy n°1” the Americans begin a pitiless hunting then - to see '' the tracking '' - and its network is infiltrated little by little by advisers.
April 26th, 2005, it makes diffuse on Internet site of Al-Qaida a video showing it with its soldiers, being involved with the shooting in the desert. It pavane a belt of explosives to the size, a light machine gun with the hand and a black scarf on the head.
In July 2005, it makes a heavy error in the business of the Egyptian diplomat kidnapped and carried out. It is a Moslem introduced like a “enemy of God ” because working with the new administration. Its Master, Al-Makdissi disunites himself of him, estimating that “ its violence blind harms the cause of the moudjahidin ”. He little by little will lose many his supports.
He dies the June 7th 2006, 18:15, local time, during an American bombardment by two F-16 in the municipality of Hibhib in the north of Bakouba, with seven of his assistants, of which its religious adviser sheik Abdel Rahman. He would have in fact survived the bombardment and would have died a few minutes after the arrival of the American soldiers on the spot. Its body could be identified thanks to its face, its scars and its digital fingerprints. See '' end of the " Lion of Irak" ''.
Terrorist career
Activities in Iraq
Zarqaoui is suspected of being the silent partner of tens of attacks (often asserted) and several hundreds of died in Iraq, where its influence became important starting from the intervention of the Coalition in 2003. Its goal was to sow chaos in Iraq for better driving out the forces of the coalition and imposing a fundamentalist Islam.
Zarqaoui is regarded as a specialist in the Poison S, formed in the Al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, its entry within Al-Qaida could be relatively recent. It bound with various islamist bunches, of which Ansar Al-Islam and the Islamic Jihad Egyptian.
In addition to targeted assassinations, Zarqaoui is the person in charge assumed of many terrorist attacks having touched the Iraqi civil population, in particular the community Shiite, at the prices of several hundreds of killed.
He asserted the attack against the seat of UNO to Baghdad (causing the death of the Brazilian representative of the United Nations Sergio Vieira of Mello), as well as the attack of a police station Italy N with Nassiriah.
Assassination of Lawrence Foley
Lawrence Foley is a American Diplomate working in Jordan for the American Agence for International expansion as a person in charge of the humane programs in this country. October 28th, 2002, he is assassinated outside his housing with Amman on Al-Zarkaoui order.
End 2002, Jordanian justice condemns Al-Zarqaoui to dead by Contumace for the murder of Lawrence Foley, and a mandate of international stop is delivered against him, mandate that neither Syria, nor Iraq agree to honor, in spite of the personal insistence of king Addallah.
Murder of Nick Berg
May 11th, 2004, a video is diffused on Internet representing the methodical one and bloody decapitation of a young American hostage Nick Berg. The video complete would show that it is Al-Zarkaoui which holds itself the knife and carries out the murder. This shocking murder is the first of a series of removals and decapitations of hostages, often come to Iraq to help with its rebuilding.
After the death of Zarqaoui, the father of Nick Berg however stated not to be certain that Zarqaoui assassinated his/her son. He also explained why the death of Zarqaoui was a " double tragédie" for the family of the islamist terrorist and also because it would be at the origin of new violences in Iraq.
The fact of filming the execution, extremely shocking for the Western public opinions and of diffusing of them the images in the whole world by Internet, mark a new climbing in islamist terror with the clear will to accentuate the psychological and media part Djihad, the “holy war”. The official statement accompanying film, clearly announces the color “ It is necessary that the enemies of God know that there is in our heart no truce nor pity for them ”.
Other assassinations
July 14th, 2004, he earlier asserts the assassination of the governor of Mosul made three days.
In July 2005, its group kidnaps and carries out an Egyptian diplomat. The sentence is shown on video, but not the execution.
January 4th, 2005, its group assassinates the governor of Baghdad.
Fusion between Al-Tawhid and Al-Qaida
In December 2004, Al-Tawhid, the organization of the terrorist Abou Moussab Al-Zarqaoui is accepted by Al-Qaida, as a regional emirate. Thus, from its activism and its very important potential, Al-Zarqaoui becomes in fact one of the most important members of the terrorist organization. He from now on is recognized like emir of all the clans affiliated to Al-Qaida in Iraq and thus of their own networks in Europe. For all the antiterrorist secret services, this rallying means that the European networks of the organization Al-Tawhid are from now on with the direct service of the “Department of Al-Qaida external operations”, and that the attacks will begin again in series.
Quickly, the intelligence services German, French and Dutch, give a report on an unusual agitation in the mosques and mediums more the extremists, and in their notes of synthesis make go up their more sharp concerns. In January 2006 it takes part in the creation of the Advisory counsel of Moudjahedines in Iraq.
Tracking
The American authorities show it many terrorist acts, and regard it as one of the main leaders of mobility Al-Qaida present in Iraq. They show it of 700 acts and offer a reward of 25 million US dollars for its capture - the same amount as for Usama Bin Laden. An islamist site put on line on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 diffused a video showing it, proving in fact that it was always alive and active. It indicated to it to want “ to drive out the crusaders, the Jews and the apostates ” of the “Country-of-two-rivers” (Iraq).
The November 20th 2005, its tribe Hassan Khalayleh-Outlaw, one of the largest tribes of Jordan, disavows it for its implication in the attacks of Jordan of November 2005 having made 67 died with Amman. The brother of Zarqaoui, Sayel Fadel Nazzal Al-Khalayleh, signed this declaration.
December 28th, 2005, Interpol emits against him a mandate of international stop communicated to the police force of the 184 Member States in order to extradite it.
At the beginning of May 2006, the American general Rick Lynch affirms that Al-Zarqaoui would be with “ Baghdad or in its close surroundings It is only one matter of time before we do not stop it ”. Its confidence would be related to the recent information obtained at the time of raids, in particular, at the time of a raid with Yusufiyah, in the south of Baghdad. The American army affirms that since January 2006, 161 important members of Al-Qaida, including 8 members of the Al-Zarqaoui staff, was stopped or killed.
During the three last years, the American services, were on several occasions, close to putting the hand on Zarqaoui, but it had always succeeded in being left the traps or of the targeted attacks conducted by its prosecutors, it is this “luck” which had taken part to forge to him, near the young Moslems, a legend of style “Zorro”.
Its end
June 8th, 2006, Iraqi the Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and the American army announce that Abou Moussab Al-Zarqaoui was killed on June 7th during an air raid, with Bakouba, in Iraq, to 50 km in the North-East of Baghdad.The death of Al-Zarqaoui results from long and hard tracking carried out by an important collaboration between the electronic resources and human resources from the intelligence services. In fact the “key to success” was the follow-up with the trace of the sheik Abdel Rahman, a “adviser spiritual” near and listened to the terrorist chief, a true “guru”. The Americans had tracked the monk for several months. However Al-Zarqaoui was wary of the cellphones which betray the site of their user, it rather used satellite phones of the type Thuraya which make the localization more difficult.
Finally, according to official Iraqi, the American intelligence services, with the assistance of the Jordanian secret services, succeeded in infiltrating the group close to Zarqaoui by an adviser, and it is thanks to him that the American analysts succeeded in determining the date and the place of the appointment of June between Zarqaoui and the sheik Abdel Rahman.
On Wednesday, June 7, with the accesses of the small village of Hibhib, located at eight kilometers in the north of Baquba, in the middle of the triangle sunnite, three GMC with the black panes have stopped in a small palm plantation with the abandonment for three years. The American staff with Baghdad is at this time there certain to have located Al-Zarqaoui “with 100% of certainty” and the order is given to the commandos of the Task forces 77, deposited by helicopters Black Hawk, to encircle the palm plantation whereas two hunters F-16 take the air.
One of the GMC with on its board the adviser from goes away whereas first shootings are exchanged between the guards of the terrorist chief and the commandos American. A little after 6 p.m., one of F-16, on order of the staff which fears once again that Al-Zarqaoui does not succeed in escaping, releases a first bomb of 250 kilos, followed a few seconds after one second bomb released by second F-16. The American commandos, accompanied by Iraqi police officers invest the places and discover three corpses and three seriously injureds there. The Americans left with the Iraqi police force the honor arrive the first on the spot and in their reports/ratios stressed that the information came from the interior even of the organization.
According to the Caldwell general, among, the casualties are Zarqaoui which “survived the air attack”. Placed on a stretcher, he would have died ten minutes later of his wounds mortals. Recognized in first thanks to its face and with its “ known scars ” left by the tattooings erased with the acid. The analysis of the digital fingerprints confirms the identity of death definitively. However, the American army carries out a survey in order to determine the exact circumstances of its death. Indeed, he would have survived the bombardment and would have died a few minutes after the arrival of the American soldiers on the spot.
According to the Americans, the hiding-place contained a “ treasure of information ” which made it possible to carry out the following day even seventeen other raids against the hiding-places of other personalities of its organization. However according to the American center for the counter-terrorism, Al-Zarqaoui would have organized a total of twenty-four terrorist groups distributed in more than forty countries, of the Muslim world, Europe and in Canada.
The Iraqi branch of network Al-Qaida in Iraq announced, Monday, June 12, 2006, in an official statement, that the organization had appointed sheik Abou Hamza Al-Mouhajer to succeed Abou Moussab Al-Zarqaoui.
Internal bond
External bond
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Research opinion on Al-Zarqaoui
- Abou Moussab Al-Zarqaoui, the follower of Bin Laden, article of May 16th, 2004
- Stories of Al-Zarqaoui, the roads of Teheran, analyzes 11/2/2005.
- Article of the newspaper '' Le Monde '', 4/29/06.
- Thomas E. Ricks, '' the American Army Assembles out of Pin the Role of Zarqaoui '', The Washington Post, April 10th, 2006
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