Qasim al-Raymi (1979-29 January 2020), also known as Abu Hureira al-Sana'ani, Muhammad Qasim Mehdi Reemy, or Qassem Mohammed Mahdi al-Rimi, was the Emir of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) from 12 June 2015 to 29 January 2020, succeeding Nasir al-Wuhayshi and preceding Khalid Batarfi.
Biography[]
Qasim al-Raymi was born in 1979 in Yemen. He became a member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and although he was arrested by the government, he escaped in a jailbreak on 3 February 2006 with 22 other men. al-Raymi appeared in an al-Qaeda video claiming responsibility for a July 2007 suicide bombing that killed 8 Spanish tourists, and on 9 August 2007 he was wrongly said to have been killed with two other rebels by the government. On 17 December 2009 he was targeted in a raid on al-Qaeda camps by US Navy ships firing cruise missiles, but he was not reported killed. He survived several more airstrikes and attacks by the United States and Yemen, and became a senior AQAP leader. al-Raymi became its military commander as the "Abu-Hureira", and he organized Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab's attempted suicide bombing on 25 December 2009.
On 16 June 2015, al-Raymi was declared by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to have succeeded Nasir al-Wuhayshi as Emir of AQAP following Wuhayshi's death on 12 June in a US airstrike in Hadhramaut Governorate. al-Raymi became the new al-Qaeda leader, and there was a possibility that he would become the new number two of Ayman al-Zawahiri. On 29 January 2020, however, he was killed in a US airstrike on his car in the Wald Rabi district of al-Bayda; his death was confirmed on 6 February.