Al-Qaida takes new hit with loss of East Africa plotter

LONDON - The killing in Somalia of a top al-Qaida militant deepens the group's woes a month after Osama bin Laden's death, but Fazul Mohammed's recent role as a trainer of aspiring operatives may have left a menacing legacy.

Somali police said on Saturday that Mohammed, one of the world's most wanted men and a master of attack planning, disguise, evasion and languages, had been killed in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Tuesday.

Washington said Mohammed, also known as Harun, was a key suspect in the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 240 people.

Mohammed, believed to be in his late 30s, also masterminded an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in November 2002 that killed 15 people, Western officials said.

But in recent years he is believed by some academics and security experts to have spent as much time training militants as directly plotting against the West, sharing his expertise with young Somalis and with Muslims who traveled to Somalia to gain paramilitary experience.

"His death is a loss for al-Qaida, but I think his more recent role as a trainer must have given it a great investment," said Nelly Lahoud, an associate professor at the Combating Terrorism Center at the US West Point military academy.

"He's one of those success stories of al-Qaida. He felt he had a duty to teach everything he knew ... He was the gift that kept on giving," said Lahoud, who has studied Mohammed's 2009 autobiography War on Islam: The Story of Fazul Harun.

The Somali government said hundreds of foreign fighters have joined the insurgency from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Gulf region and Western nations such as the United States and Britain. Some of the foreign jihadists have taken up leadership positions in militant groups.

In the past five years, Mohammed forged ties with the al Shabaab Somali armed group fighting to topple the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, and he is said by Western security officials to have acted as one of the Somali rebels' links to al-Qaida's core leadership.

Western security officials said they suspect Mohammed also coordinated with militants in al-Qaida's Arabian Peninsula branch based in Yemen - the al-Qaida branch responsible for the network's boldest attacks on Western targets in recent years.

Security specialists who have studied Mohammed said he was highly pragmatic, cool-headed and calculating. His languages included Arabic, Comorian, Swahili and English.

Reuters

(China Daily 06/13/2011 page12)