Number two
August 28, 2011
Yet another high ranking al Qaeda member has been killed, according to Pakistani and American officials. Atiyah abd al-Rahman, a Libyan by birth, was reportedly killed by an unmanned drone in the Waziristan region of Pakistan on August 22, unnamed officials told Reuters news agency on Saturday.
Though officials are tight-lipped about the circumstances leading to Rahman's death, an official from the Pakistani intelligence bureau, the ISI, told the German news agency dpa that he'd been killed in a drone attack.
Rahman had stepped into the number two spot in the organization after Osama bin Laden's assassination forced Ayman al-Zawahri into the leadership role. Security analysts say he was a multi-talented coordinator.
Effective terror coordinator
"It's immensely important that he's been killed," Anna Murson of risk consultancy Exclusive Analysis told Reuters. She said Rahman was widely trusted in the terrorist group and a figure around whom disparate factions of Islamists had coalesced.
By contrast, al-Zawahri is said to lack the charisma to pull the organization together. "Zawahri needed Atiyah's experience and connections to help manage al Qaeda," a US official said.
Though he'd lacked the same worldwide infamy of Zawahri and bin Laden, Rahman had been important behind the scenes.
Rahman has also been identified as the al Qaeda leader who gave orders remotely from Pakistan to a terror cell in Düsseldorf, Germany in March. That cell was broken up by German police before planned attacks could be carried out.
Rahman joined bin Laden as a teenager to fight the Soviet Union army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Author: Stuart Tiffen (dpa, AP, Reuters)
Editor: Ben Knight