Mohammed Atef (1944-16 November 2001) was the military chief of al-Qaeda, originally from Egypt. Atef was a former police officer, and he was related to Osama bin Laden through marriage, with Atef's son marrying Osama's daughter. Atef was one of the highest-ranking al-Qaeda leaders under Osama, and he gave Osama the idea of using planes on suicide missions, leading to the 9/11 attacks of 11 September 2001. On 16 November 2001, Atef was killed in an airstrike on a hotel outside of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, during the United States invasion.
Biography[]
Atef's FBI wanted list photo
Mohammed Atef was born between 1944 and 1956 in Alexandria, Egypt to a family of Sunni Muslims, and he served two years in the Egyptian Air Force before becoming an agricultural engineer. After being a police officer for a short while, he joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) organization of Ayman al-Zawahiri and headed to Afghanistan to join the Mujahideen in their resistance to the Soviet Union. He convinced Abdullah Azzam to abandon his life and also join jihad against the West, and at a training camp in Afghanistan, he met Osama bin Laden. From 11-20 August 1988 he took part in the founding of al-Qaeda, and he helped to influence the decision to do 9/11, as he was opposed to exchanging hostages for prisoners in simple aircraft hijackings. In 1991, he succeeded Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri as the military chief of al-Qaeda, and he was alleged to have trained militants in Somalia to attack the United States. In 1998 he was involved in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, and after Operation Infinite Reach endangered al-Qaeda, he frisked journalists that sought to meet with Bin Laden.
September 11[]
Mohammed Atef captured on video
In 1999 he met with Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the al-Matar complex in Afghanistan, where he helped in selecting the targets for 9/11. He entrusted Ziad Jarrah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mohamed Atta, and Nawaf al-Hazmi with undertaking the highly secret operation, and after the USS Cole bombing in 2000 he was moved to Kandahar, where Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri later joined him when no US reprisals took place. In volleyball games set up by al-Qaeda, Mohammed and Osama would be on opposite teams because they were both tall and good players. In January 2001 his daughter married Osama's 17-year-old son Mohammed in a wedding of 400 guests, including Taliban officials. In November 2001, after the 9/11 attacks were carried out, the Taliban gave him Afghan citizenship.
Death[]
In October 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan to destroy the al-Qaeda training camps and overthrow the Taliban government, and on 16 November he was killed in a US Air Force bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan along with seven others. Atef's death weakened Afghanistan, as he personally ran several of the training camps. By the end of the year, the training camps were overrun and destroyed. Abu Zubaydah briefly replaced him as al-Qaeda's military chief before he was arrested in 2002.