by Adrian Levy
Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s network
Ammar al-Balochi, 39, KSM’s nephew. He hosted several 9/11 hijackers in Dubai and arranged for their onward journeys to the United States. After 9/11, he was an important member of KSM’s Karachi support network until he was captured in 2003 and found to be carrying a small perfume bottle containing low-grade cyanide. He remains at Guantánamo Bay, charged with plotting the 9/11 attacks.
Walid bin Attash, 37, aka Silver, Ammar al-Balochi’s one-legged Yemeni deputy. Before 9/11, Attash helped send funds to the hijackers in the United States to pay for flight training and living expenses. He was captured along with Ammar al-Balochi in a joint CIA/ISI operation in Karachi and remains at Guantánamo Bay, charged with plotting the 9/11 attacks.
Hassan Ghul, one of KSM’s main couriers who maintained communications between Al Qaeda Central, the military committee based in Iran, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. When Kurdish forces captured him in 2004 he provided key information about Osama bin Laden’s location, then he was rendered to a black site and tortured by the CIA. In 2006, he was released via the ISI with instructions that he should search Pakistan’s Tribal Areas for Al Qaeda’s leader. Instead he went rogue and he was killed in a drone strike in October 2012.
Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, aka Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, 34, a childhood friend of KSM who helped to train some of the hijackers. After 9/11, KSM deployed him as a courier to maintain communications with Osama bin Laden and in 2002 asked him to become Osama’s permanent companion. To establish his cover story of having retired from jihadist activities, he married Maryam, a village girl from Shangla, in northwest Pakistan, and moved Osama into a vacant house owned by Maryam’s parents. He was shot dead during the Abbottabad raid but Maryam survived and was intensively questioned by the ISI.
Abrar Saeed Ahmed, 36, older brother of Ibrahim and employed by him in 2003 to assist in caring for Osama bin Laden and his rapidly growing household. Abrar purchased the land on which Osama’s Abbottabad compound was built and supervised construction of the house. He lived on the ground floor of the main floor and was killed during the raid, along with his Pakistani wife Bushra.
Pakistan military and intelligence services
General Javed Alam Khan, 70, a senior ISI official during the first eighteen months after 9/11 who worked closely with Robert Grenier of the CIA to apprehend high-value targets including Abu Zubaydah. The ISI and CIA opened a secret joint interrogation center in Islamabad code-named the Clubhouse but relations soured when the CIA demanded more access to detainees and insisted on taking a more prominent role in operations.
General Ehsan ul-Haq, 66, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate from October 2001 to 2004. President Pervez Musharraf brought him in to replace General Mahmud Ahmed, who was regarded by Washington as supportive of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Several high-value targets were apprehended in Pakistan during General ul-Haq’s tenure.
General Pervez Musharraf, 73, seized control of Pakistan in a military coup in October 1999 and signed up to President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” after 9/11. Pakistan benefited from more than $10 billion in U.S. aid during his time in power, most of which went directly to the military. After Musharraf was forced to resign as president in 2008 in the face of impeachment charges, Pakistan was accused of playing a double game by continuing to support the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and homegrown jihadi movements. Some opponents claim that Musharraf knew Osama was in Pakistan all along and that he was responsible for the assassination of his political nemesis, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in December 2007.
General Hamid Gul, 78, a former director general of the ISI who promoted himself as the Godfather of the Taliban and described Pakistan’s outlawed jihadi leaders as his close friends. He secretly assisted in providing a ring of security around Osama in Abbottabad. In 2010, the ISI asked him to negotiate a peace deal with Osama and Al Qaeda and discussions were ongoing when Osama was killed. Gul died of natural causes in August 2015.
General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, 64, director general of the ISI at the time Osama bin Laden was killed. Pasha presided over a period in which relations with the CIA reached their nadir. He was named in U.S. court documents as being culpable in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and accused of protecting Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, although there is no evidence to support this.
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, 64, Pakistan Army chief at the time Osama bin Laden was killed. Kayani was completely caught out by the covert U.S. operation and took four days to issue a statement. He has never spoken about the raid or what he knew, if anything, of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan.
Pakistani Islamist leaders known personally to Osama bin Laden
Fazlur Rehman Khalil, 55, the founder and leader of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, who knew Osama since the time of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Khalil, a Punjabi by birth, had been a popular commander, fluent in Arabic and a skilled operator with a Stinger missile. His group gained notoriety in 1995 when mujahideen loyal to him kidnapped six Western backpackers in Indian Kashmir, one of whom was beheaded. In 1998, Khalil became a signatory to Osama’s famous fatwa against “Jews and Crusaders.” He was at the forefront of the operation to protect Osama in Abbottabad. He lives in Islamabad.
Hafiz Saeed, 58, founder of the ISI-sponsored jihad group Lashkar-e-Taiba that planned and executed the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008. Saeed knew Osama personally and was the “best friend” of General Hamid Gul. Although the U.S. government has placed a $10 million bounty on Saeed’s head, he remains at liberty in Pakistan, regularly appearing at public rallies.
Ilyas Kashmiri, 47, a veteran of the elite Special Services Group (President Musharraf’s former military unit). His skills were honed during the Afghan jihad of the eighties when he resigned his commission to establish an irregular brigade of fighters funded, armed, and trained by the ISI. During the nineties, the ISI sent him to battle Indian forces in Kashmir but he later went rogue and joined Al Qaeda. He made two assassination attempts on Musharraf in December 2003 and attacked the Pakistan naval base at Mehran, Karachi, in May 2011. He was killed by a U.S. drone strike using location intelligence provided by the ISI in August 2011.
Ghost detainees of U.S. war on terror
Dr. Ghairat Baheer, a son-in-law of the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Baheer was detained in Islamabad in October 2002. An Afghan national, he was handed over to the CIA and flown to the Salt Pit, a secret CIA detention facility near Kabul, where he later met KSM. He was tortured but refused to provide information about Osama’s whereabouts. He lost ninety pounds in his first month of detention and was later transferred to another secret U.S. prison at Bagram, where he remained until 2008.
Gul Rahman, 30, a friend of Ghairat Baheer who was arrested with him and was later found dead in his cell at Detention Site Cobalt, naked, with his shackled arms and legs chained to the wall. Although the CIA confirmed that a prisoner had died, his name was kept secret and his family was not informed. An investigation by the CIA Inspector General noted that the two architects of the CIA torture program were present at Cobalt when Rahman arrived and that one of them interrogated him, but he was not found to have played any role in Rahman’s death.
Aafia Siddiqui, 44, a Pakistani-born, U.S.-educated neuroscientist who married KSM’s nephew Ammar al-Balochi before being abducted and disappearing in 2003. After she reappeared and was arrested in 2008, U.S. government lawyers alleged that she had been assisting with future attacks on U.S. soil and had tried to shoot four U.S. security personnel. She alleged she was a ghost detainee between 2003 and 2008 and tortured. There is circumstantial evidence that she was kept at the Salt Pit. She was convicted to eighty-six years in prison in 2010.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 45, married to the sister of Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed’s wife. He traveled to Afghanistan in 1991. He was arrested in Mauritania shortly after 9/11 and transferred to Guantánamo Bay, where he claimed that he was subjected to mock executions. He wrote
a bestselling memoir, Guantánamo Diary, detailing the abuses he had suffered. He was released from Guantánamo in October 2016.
Iran
General Qassem Suleimani, 59, the head of the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for extraterritorial clandestine operations. Suleimani took personal responsibility for Osama bin Laden’s family and Al Qaeda’s military council when they sought sanctuary in Iran in 2002, arranging for them to live inside the Quds Forces training headquarters. More recently, he has played a vital role in supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, bringing in Russia, Hezbollah, and several Al Qaeda affiliates on the Syrian government’s side. He was overall commander of the Aleppo offensive of 2015 and has been sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Ali Younsei, 60s, Iranian minister for intelligence and security when the Al Qaeda group was first placed under house arrest in the Quds Force compound in Tehran in 2002. He dealt personally with their representative, Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, 56, U.S.-educated Iranian career diplomat and currently minister of foreign affairs. In 2003, Zarif played a key role in negotiations to reach a “Grand Bargain” with the United States, offering to hand over Osama bin Laden’s family and Al Qaeda’s military council, a deal that the United States rejected. He also led the discussions that resulted in the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran in January 2016.
Afghanistan
Mullah Omar, 51, founder of the Taliban. He allowed Osama bin Laden to relocate to Afghanistan in 1996, but two years later the leaders clashed at a stormy meeting in Kandahar and never spoke again. Many blamed bin Laden for a suicide attack on Mullah Omar’s compound that injured Omar and killed one of his sons. Omar fled Afghanistan in October 2001 on the back of a motorbike and spent the rest of his life in Pakistan. Evidence that he had died in a Karachi hospital in 2013 did not emerge until two years later.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 69, a notorious Afghan mujahideen commander who founded the Hezb-i-Islami party. One of the seven warlords who worked closely with the CIA and ISI during the Soviet war, he helped Osama bin Laden hide in Kunar Province after 9/11 and arranged for Osama’s family to be sheltered in Iran. Washington has designated him a “global terrorist” and has tried to kill him several times, but he remains at large.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, 77, another of the mujahideen commanders who the CIA paid to fight its war against the Soviet Union. Once described by U.S. congressman Charlie Wilson as “goodness personified,” Haqqani became the Taliban’s military commander in October 2001 and later slipped into Pakistan, where he founded the Haqqani terrorist network with ISI funding. Haqqani’s son Sirajuddin took over operations several years ago but family members continue to deny news reports that Jalaluddin has died.
Key U.S. figures involved in the hunt for Osama bin Laden
General Tommy Franks, 71, led the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and commanded the failed operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in December 2001. Franks relied on U.S. aerial firepower and a guarantee from the Pakistan Army that they would block bin Laden’s escape routes eastward. At a critical moment in the battle, Pakistani troops were partially stood down following an attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi, enabling Osama to escape.
Robert Grenier, the CIA’s station chief in Islamabad on 9/11. He put together the basic war plan for the invasion of Afghanistan and led the hunt for Abu Zubaydah. In 2002, he was redeployed to work on covert operations ahead of the invasion of Iraq but was sacked by Porter Goss in 2006 and went on to establish his own strategic security firm.
Ali Soufan, 45, a Lebanese-American former FBI agent. Prior to 9/11, Soufan, one of the few Arabic speakers in the U.S. intelligence services, warned that Al Qaeda was plotting to attack the U.S. mainland. In 2002, he was the first to interrogate Abu Zubaydah, obtaining critical information that confirmed that 9/11 mastermind “Mokhtar” was Khalid Shaikh Mohammad. Soufan was sidelined when the CIA took control of Zubaydah’s interrogation and tested its Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on him. Soufan resigned from the FBI in 2005 and established a private security consultancy firm.
Dr. James Mitchell, 64, a clinical psychologist and founder of the U.S. Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training school. Together with his colleague Dr. Bruce Jessen, Mitchell designed the CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques program. By the time their services were terminated in 2009, Mitchell and Jessen’s company had been paid $71 million. After their methods were redefined by a U.S. Senate inquiry as torture, Mitchell, who lives in Florida, defended himself, saying: “I’m just a guy who got asked to do something for his country by people at the highest level of government, and I did the best that I could.” Jessen has never commented.
Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst who was tasked with establishing links between Al Qaeda and Iraq in the run-up to the Iraq war. Bakos handled data that first identified Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as he was preparing his forces in Kurdish Iraq in 2002, information that the Bush administration manipulated to build its case for war against Saddam Hussein. Bakos was also involved in the interrogation of Al Qaeda courier Hassan Ghul in January 2004.
Gina Bennett, a key member of the CIA’s bin Laden hunting team for more than two decades. Bennett pulled together much of the information about the Abbottabad household. She told SEAL Team Six she was “100 percent” sure that Osama bin Laden was on the top floor, and she is widely regarded as the basis for the character Maya in the Hollywood movie Zero Dark Thirty.
Matthew Bissonnette, 40, a member of SEAL Team Six. He was one of the first into Osama bin Laden’s bedroom and took photographs of the dead Al Qaeda leader. He broke the SEAL code of silence by publishing the book No Easy Day. He was later forced to hand over all his profits and an unauthorized photograph of bin Laden’s corpse.
Robert O’Neill, 40, a second member of SEAL Team Six who described his experiences in magazine articles and television interviews. O’Neill claimed to have fired the fatal shots into bin Laden’s forehead, an account that was disputed by Bissonnette. After leaving the army, O’Neill made a new career for himself as a motivational speaker.
Admiral William McRaven, 60, commander of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command in 2011. He planned and oversaw Operation Neptune Spear.
Leon Panetta, 78, CIA director at the time of the Abbottabad raid, an operation that ended his previously positive relationship with ISI chief General Pasha. He was later promoted to defense secretary.
Admiral Mike Mullen, 69, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the raid. He later accused Pakistan of “exporting” violent extremism and described the Haqqani network as a “veritable arm” of the ISI.
Others involved in the Abbottabad episode
Husain Haqqani, 60, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington at the time of the bin Laden raid. Haqqani was asked by the CIA to assist with the relocation to the United States of several Pakistani citizens who had helped with surveillance before the operation. After Osama’s killing, he became mired in controversy and was forced to resign after being accused of writing a memo on behalf of Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, warning of a military coup.
Dr. Shakil Afridi, 45, a Pakistani medical doctor who was recruited to spy on the Abbottabad compound. Afridi, who believed that he was working on a Save the Children vaccination program, was instructed to obtain blood samples from all residents but failed to gain entry. After the raid, General Pasha of the ISI accused him of treason and he was arrested and convicted on trumped-up charges. He later claimed that he had been tortured and his former lawyer was shot dead in Peshawar in 2015. He remains in prison.
Islamic State/Nusra Front
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 40, originally from Zarqa in Jordan. This tattooed former street fighter rose from obscurity to form Al Qaeda in Iraq during the U.S. war of 2003. After al-Zarqawi won notoriety following a series of brutal beheadings, his spiritual guide and mentor, the Palestinian-Jor
danian preacher Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, turned on him in 2005. Zarqawi ignored his critics and founded what later became Islamic State, using Iran as a transit point for funds and recruits. He was killed by a U.S. missile attack in Iraq in July 2006.
Abu Mohammad al-Julani, 35, leader of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. Once a deputy to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of Islamic State, Julani fell out with al-Baghdadi over a tussle for power in Syria. Julani cites his leading influences as Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Suri.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 45, an Iraqi religious student who was radicalized during his internment at U.S. Camp Bucca during the Iraq war. Al-Baghdadi seized control of Islamic State of Iraq in 2011, expanded the war into Syria, and changed the name of his organization to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2013. In 2014, he announced the formation of a caliphate with himself named as “Caliph Ibrahim.” Based in Mosul until the offensive of 2016, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports of his death, but he appears to remain at large.
Bibliography
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Abu Ghaith, Sulaiman. Twenty Guidelines on the Path to Jihad.
Ahmed, Khaled. Sleepwalking to Surrender: Dealing with Terrorism in Pakistan. New York: Viking, 2016.
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al-Bahri, Nasser. Guarding Bin Laden: My Life in al-Qaeda. With Georges Malbrunot. Translated by Susan de Muth. London: Thin Man Press, 2013.
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