The Egyptian Saif al-Adel, a former officer of the special forces of the Egyptian army, was chosen as the temporary leader of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, a former Libyan extremist told the American TV network CNN.
Al Qaeda's interim leader is Saif al-Adel, who has long held a prominent role in the group, said Noman Benotman, a former leader of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, an organization that was once close to al Qaeda but has renounced its ideology in recent years. .
These allegations were also confirmed by the Pakistani newspaper "News", referring to unnamed sources.
Benotman told CNN that based on personal connections with extremists and discussions on extremist forums, al-Adel, also known as Muhammad Ibrahim Makavi, was chosen as the interim leader of al-Qaeda because the organization had become "impatient" in recent days, as that it has not been officially announced who will succeed Osama bin Laden.
Benotman said the decision to appoint al-Adel was made by six to eight al-Qaeda leaders in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
Al-Adela's name is also associated with the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
He said that the decision to put an Egyptian at the head of the organization might not be well received by the Saudi and Yemeni members of Al Qaeda, who believe that Bin Laden's successor should be from the Arabian Peninsula, a region that all Muslims consider sacred.
Al Adel fought against the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and after the fall of the Taliban regime in this country, he fled to Iran, from where he directed the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia that began in Riyadh in May 2003, in which many people were killed. dozens of people.
Al-Adela's name is also associated with the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
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