Top Al Qaeda Bomb Maker Reportedly Killed In Air Strikes

“Drugeon’s death would be a severe blow to Khorasan’s plans,” CBS reports.

Army Lt. General William Mayville Jr. speaks about the operations in Syria during a news conference at the Pentagon.Cliff Owen/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Update (11/7/2014): CBS News reported on Thursday that one of Al Qaeda’s lead bomb makers, a member of the Khorasan group targeted by the first US airstrikes in Syria, is dead—according to US officials. Officials claim that one of the missiles fired at Khorasan targets struck a car reportedly carrying David Drugeon, the former French intelligence officer who helped develop some of the group’s secretive bombs designed to make it past airport security. “Sources told CBS News…that Drugeon’s death would be a severe blow to Khorasan’s plans to attack Europe and the US,” CBS reports.

On Monday night, September 22, a US-led coalition launched air strikes in Syria against members of ISIS, the extremist Islamic group occupying territory in Iraq and Syria. As a “last-minute add-on,” NBC reports, the United States also targeted a different terrorist group: a little-known outfit called Khorasan. This Al Qaeda affiliate gained some public attention earlier this month after US officials reported that the extremists were plotting to sneak bombs on to US airplanes. Last week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper noted that the group “perhaps” posed as great a threat to the United States as ISIS. On Tuesday morning, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby maintained that strikes on ISIS and Khorasan were “very successful.” The US targeted Khorasan’s “training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communications building and command and control facilities,” the Pentagon told the Washington Post. 

News of these air strikes raised an obvious question: Who and what is Khorasan? The group is led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a 33-year-old senior Al Qaeda operative who was privy to Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 plans prior to the attacks, according to the New York Times. US officials have tracked Fadhli for years, and the State Department refers to him as a “senior facilitator and financier” for Al Qaeda. In 2012, the State Department was offering up to $7 million for information about his whereabouts. Born in Kuwait, he has operated in Chechnya, fighting Russian soldiers, according to the United Nations, and has been wanted in connection to Al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia.

In a conference call with reporters after the air strikes, several senior administration officials, speaking on background, said that Khorasan had established a safe haven within the chaos of Syria to plot attacks against the United States and other Western nations. One official reported that this planning was “nearing the execution phase.” A senior administration official also said that Khorasan—described as a band of experienced Al Qaeda veterans—was recruiting Westerners fighting in Syria for “external operations,” and that Khorasan plotting had prompted the United States to beef up aviation security measures a few months ago. One administration official noted that President Obama had been contemplating strikes against Khorasan for months “separate and apart from the growing threat from ISIL.”

On Monday, prior to the strikes, Brian Forst, a professor at American University and a counterterrorism expert, told Mother Jones, “If we can find al-Fadhli and take him out, Khorasan will be largely neutered.” Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior terrorism expert with the RAND Corporation, contends that leaders can always be replaced, referring to both Al Qaeda and ISIS, which have cycled through different leaders. “It doesn’t end their operations,” Jenkins says. “It has a disruptive effect.”

Khorasan, according to press reports, has about 50 jihadist fighters, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan. US officials told the AP earlier this month that the group was sent to Syria by Al Qaeda top dog Ayman al-Zawahari to link up with another Al Qaeda affiliated group, the Nusra Front, and “recruit Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a US-bound airliner with less scrutiny from security officials.”

Aki Peritz, a former counterterrorism analyst with the CIA, says, “It’s much easier to recruit people—especially those with foreign passports—in Syria than in Pakistan for operations abroad.” He adds, “Given that there are several thousand foreigners in Syria today, it’s probably much easier for Al Qaeda to spot, assess, develop, recruit, and train willing individuals there than anywhere else in the world.”   

Jenkins compared the fighting in Syria and Iraq to a “talent show” that Khorasan was watching and judging, looking for recruits. Khorasan is “scarier” than ISIS, he argues, because it is focused primarily on attacking the West. Forst also notes that Khorasan focuses “more on the West than Syria,” while ISIS is “focusing on Middle Eastern targets.”

So does the Obama administration have the legal authority to hit Khorasan? Under the post-9/11 authorization provided by Congress in 2001, the president is allowed to use force against “those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” And senior administration officials contend that this authorization covers Khorasan, given its connection to Al Qaeda.

In in a statement on Tuesday morning, Obama referred to Khorasan as “seasoned Al Qaeda operatives”—and he seemed to this group with ISIS, as he vowed to “do what’s necessary to take the fight to this terrorist group.” He added, “Once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against America and try to do Americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.” But as the president spoke, there was not sufficient public information to judge the nature and seriousness of the threat posed by a group most Americans had not yet heard of.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate