According to intelligence sources, Nashiri’s role as Al Qaeda’s operational chief in the Persian Gulf region made him one of the best-connected members of Al Qaeda still on the loose. U.S. officials say Nashiri was involved in at least two major attacks on U.S. targets: the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, and the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. In the embassy attacks, Nashiri allegedly helped train the bombers, one of whom was his cousin. U.S. officials say that Nashiri was the chief planner of the Cole attack, leaving Yemen a few days before the bombing. Visiting Yemen before the Cole attack, Nashiri came into contact with Ahmed Al-Hada, father-in-law of 9-11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar, intelligence sources say. (Al-Hada ran a Qaeda safe house used to relay phone calls to and from the Qaeda high command in Afghanistan.) Officials believe that in Yemen, Nashiri also encountered Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a fixer for the 9-11 hijack cell in Hamburg, Germany, who recently was captured in Pakistan. U.S. officials say they do not believe that Nashiri was involved in the 9-11 attacks. But Nashiri’s co-plotters in the Cole attack included Khallad, a notorious one-legged terrorist, and Qaed Senyan al-Harithi, Al Qaeda’s alleged chief in Yemen, who was killed by a missile fired from a CIA-operated Predator drone in early November. Since the Cole attack, intelligence sources say, Nashiri has commuted between Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
American officials indicated they are very pleased at the extent to which the once recalcitrant Yemeni government is now aggressively going after the terrorists in its midst. Antiterrorism experts are also heartened by the arrest in Indonesia of Imam Samudra, an alleged plotter of the Bali nightclub bombing. But officials still acknowledge that Al Qaeda is likely to remain a major threat until bin Laden himself is finally captured or killed.
