Yemen’s al-Qaida says top cleric killed; he was released from Guantánamo in ’06
Yemen’s al-Qaida branch announced Tuesday that its top cleric, a Saudi national for whom the U.S. State Department offered a $5 million bounty, has been killed, allegedly in a drone attack.
Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula said in a statement posted on Twitter that Ibrahim al-Rubaysh was killed along with other, unnamed members of the group by a drone late Sunday. The statement did not specify the location of the drone attack.
In December, the State Department declared the Saudi a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Two months earlier it offered a $5 million reward for information about his whereabouts.
Yemeni and U.S. officials had no immediate comment on the claim.
The Bush administration repatriated Rubaysh, now in his mid 30s, to his native Saudi Arabia in December 2006 — a period when the White House was conducting large-scale transfers of a dozen or more war-on-terror prisoners to a Saudi rehabilitation program. He subsequently turned up in Yemen where he was considered the group’s the main ideologue and theological adviser and his writings and sermons were prominent in its publications.
Last year, he hailed the seizure of large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria by al-Qaida’s rival, the Islamic State group. “I ask God that efforts are united to target the enemies of the religion,” he said in a video recording at the time.
If the drone attack is confirmed, it would be the first use of unmanned aircraft since Yemen sank further into turmoil last month, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to launch airstrikes on March 26 in an attempt to halt Yemen’s Shiite rebels known as Houthis who have taken over much of the country.
The Houthi advance has also forced Yemen’s Western-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee the country as his government crumbled.
U.S. officials have said the collapse of Hadi’s government could undermine Washington’s counterterrorism strategy against al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen, known as AQAP. Washington considers the branch to be the most powerful in the terrorist network.
In late March, about 100 U.S. military advisers withdrew from the al-Annad air base where they had been leading the U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Yemen.
Washington rarely comments on drone attacks. U.S. officials had been concerned their counterterrorism capabilities would be diminished because of the withdrawal of their staff. However, they said the al-Qaida branch will likely be drawn toward the internal Yemeni conflict, and away from plotting to go after Western targets.
Al-Qaida is a staunch rival of the Shiite rebels, and has already waged a number of attacks against their advances.
U.S. officials also said that CIA drone strikes would continue but that there will be fewer of them.
This story was originally published April 14, 2015 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Yemen’s al-Qaida says top cleric killed; he was released from Guantánamo in ’06."