Adnan el-Shukrijumah, the senior al Qaeda operative who had Guyanese citizenship, was yesterday killed after more than a decade of slipping under the FBI’s radar.

El-Shukrijumah, 39, was killed by Pakistani soldiers early on Saturday morning in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal area, a mountainous territory bordering Afghanistan.

According to Reuters, he was the most senior al Qaeda member ever killed by the Pakistani military, and was believed at one time to have been al Qaeda’s external operations chief.

Three images of Adnan el-Shukrijumah, 39, who was killed in Pakistan on Saturday

A Pakistani military statement said that his accomplice and local facilitator were also killed in the raid, Reuters reported.

El-Shukrijumah’s death comes on the heels of a widespread military operation launched by the Pakistani military in North Waziristan earlier this year, as a consequence of which he had been forced to move.

El-Shukrijumah had been on the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) watch list for more than a decade, and on their US list of Most Wanted Terrorists issued in 2010, he was cited as having Guyanese citizenship.

It was reported he had been in Guyana at one point.

The FBI further said that he spoke English and carried a Guyanese passport as well as Saudi, Canadian, and Trinidadian passports.

In 2010, el-Shukrijumah was reported as the new head of al-Qaeda global operations after he took over from alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed following the latter’s arrest in 2003. His appointment would have placed him in regular contact with al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, including the now deceased Osama bin Laden.

El-Shukrijumah was indicted for his alleged role in a terrorist plot against New York’s subway system and was further suspected of playing roles in orchestrating terrorist attacks in Panama, Norway and the United Kingdom which never materialised. He was also linked by US authorities to the group accused of planning to blow up fuel pipelines at New York’s John F Kennedy Airport.

JFK plot

It is believed that it was Shukrijumah’s reported presence in Guyana that propelled US authorities to send informant Steven Francis to Guyana in an attempt to lure the elusive terrorist into the trap of plotting to blow up the fuel tanks and lines at JFK airport in New York. Three Guyanese and a Trinida-dian were subsequently convicted on charges in relation to this conspiracy.

Reports are that while he was in Guyana, Shukrijmumah was once safe and secure under the protection of Swiss House Cambio boss Farouk Razac, who died in May 2007 under mysterious circumstances at his home.

According to reports Shukrijumah was spotted at the Swiss House Cambio by several witnesses, including self-proclaimed death squad informant George Bacchus. Bacchus himself was gunned down in 2006 following his many public statements about the existence and operation of a death squad.

It was at the cambio he also allegedly became acquainted with Abdul Nur who in 2010 pleaded guilty to plotting to attack the JFK airport. Nur ran errands for Razac and Abdul Kadir, a former Mayor of Linden and parliamentarian. Kadir was also convicted in the JFK plot case in 2010.

The assumption by federal authorities that they might have lured Shukrijumah out of hiding was wrong as he failed to appear at any of the planning sessions in Trinidad and Guyana, and the federal officials were left only with a hefty bill.

Shukrijumah’s father Gulshair was born in Guyana, where his grandfather Mohammad Jumah ran a general store. One of eleven children, Gulshair developed an interest in Arabic and began working as a tailor.

At the age of 32, he moved to Cairo where he studied at the al-Azhar University, and then Medina in Saudi Arabia, where he enrolled at al-Madina al Manawarah (The Islamic University of Medina) and became steeped in the writings of Ibn Taymiyah and Sayyid Qutb.

In Saudi Arabia, Gulshair taught at several madrassahs, and at the age of 42 met and married Mareed Zuhrah Abu Ahmed.

Two years later, on August 4, 1975, Mareed gave birth to their first child, Adnan. Three more children were born to the couple before the family moved to Trinidad, where Gulshair received a monthly stipend of $1,500 from the Saudi government to spread the doctrine of Wahhabism. The family later moved to the US.

Shukrijumah’s mother, Zuhrah Abu Ahmed, told AP in 2010 on the front step of her small home in suburban Miramar, Florida, that her son frequently talked about what he considered the excesses of American society — such as alcohol and drug abuse and women wearing skimpy clothes — but that he did not condone violence. She also said she had not had contact with her son for several years.

“This boy would never do evil stuff. He is not an evil person,” she said. “He loved this country. He never had a problem with the United States,” she told AP.

Before turning to radical strains of Islam, Shukrijumah lived in Miramar with his mother and five siblings, excelling at computer science and chemistry courses while studying at community college. He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn, New York.

At some point in the late 1990s, according to the FBI, Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in “jihad,” or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia.

That led to training camps in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic and advanced training in the use of automatic weapons, explosives, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage, AP said.

 Predawn raid

According to Reuters, the attack on el-Shukrijumah’s hideout occurr-ed just before dawn, when South Waziristan residents heard the sound of helicopter gunships and convoys of military vehicles approaching from several directions.

“The vehicles headed to a small house in a neighbourhood residents said was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban,” the Reuters report said. “The house had not been used to shelter Afghan Taliban for years.”

The news agency went on to say that an Arab man had moved into the house almost two months ago and that he only moved around at night so the neighbours never saw him.

According to a military official, “security forces had first heard Chinese hostages were held there and planned a large operation when they learned it was Shukrijumjah. ‘Thousands’ of soldiers were involved in the operation.”

Citing two intelligence officers as a source, Reuters reported that the militants opened fire on the Pakistani military and Shukrijumah was killed in the ensuing gun battle along with one Pakistani soldier. A second soldier sustained wounds.

Shukrijumah’s wife and four children were also taken into custody.

According to the bulletin on the FBI’s website, Shukrijumah was wanted for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction; providing material support to a foreign terrorist organisation; conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation; receiving military-type training from a foreign terrorist organisation; conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries; attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and use of destructive device.

A reward of up to US$5M had been offered for information leading directly to his capture.