Abu Laith al-Libi (1967-29 January 2008), born Ali Ammar Ashur al-Rufayi, was a senior leader of the Al-Qaeda movement in Afghanistan who was an expert in guerrilla warfare.
Biography[]
Ali Ammar Ashur al-Rufayi was born in Libya in 1967, and in the 1980s he joined the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union. He returned to Libya in 1994 and attempted to oust Libyan Arab Jamahiriya dictator Muammar Gadaffi from power, but failed, and he fled to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the failed coup d'etat. Following the Khobar Towers bombing in the Saudi city of Khobar he was arrested, and fled to Afghanistan.
He made contact with the infamous Omar Khadr in 1997, asking his father Ahmed Khadr to let him bring Omar with him as a Pashto translator. After Khadr was wounded in a gunfight with the US Army in 2002, al-Libi tried to give gifts to the family as an apology, but Ahmed Khadr was angry at al-Libi for not taking care of his son.
In May 2005, when Abu Faraj al-Libi was captured by the CIA and Pakistan ISI, his identity was confused with him due to the similarity of their names and their same nationality. In February 2007, al-Libi attempted to kill US Vice-President Dick Cheney in a Bagram air base bombing, and his last public appearance was in November 2007, when he reported the merger of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and Al-Qaeda.
Death[]
On 31 January 2008 the CIA launched a predator drone attack on al-Libi's compound in Mir Ali, Pakistan, hoping to get rid of a senior Pakistani Al-Qaeda member. Three other Al-Qaeda cadres were killed along with al-Libi.