Photos of "Jafar the Pilot" from the FBI's wanted poster.
There has been much discussion of Iran having the bomb and of North Korea having the bomb but, little talk of the U.S.'s #1 enemy having the bomb -- al-Qaeda.
Perhaps because that intel comes from Guantánamo Bay and proves that waterboarding works.
The first detainee to give up any information about him was Abu Zubaydah, sometime after May 2002, maybe even as late as August when Zubaydah was waterboarded. He told his interrogators that "Jafar the Pilot" would deliver a so-called American Hiroshima, an ambitious plan to detonate dirty bombs (conventional explosives filled with radioactive material) inside America. But Zubaydah did not know Jafar’s real name [Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah]. It wasn’t until interrogators got hold of Khalid Sheik Mohammad—who had met Adnan in Pakistan—that they discovered he had been a Florida resident for 16 years. -- [source at end]
Tracking el-Shukrijumah
In the late 1990s, U.S. authorities believed that el-Shukrijumah may have been trained at an Afghan training camp. He is alleged to have received assistance from American neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui.
Next, el-Shukrijumah enrolled at Broward Community College, earning money on the side working as a freelance computer technician. He applied for a green card to gain permanent residence in the United States, but lied on his application about having ever been arrested in the past.
In May 2001, after receiving his degree in computer engineering, el-Shukrijumah left the United States and flew to Trinidad.
Jose Padilla claims to have been partnered with el-Shukrijumah in the summer of 2001, and that the pair were taught how to steal natural gas from apartment complexes and detonate explosions in a course they received at the Kandahar airport. [?!] Padilla claims that the two men constantly fought, and he eventually went to Mohammed Atef to complain that he couldn't work with el-Shukrijumah and the training was canceled.
In late 2002, el-Shukrijumah phoned his parents to tell them that he had found a wife, settled down and had a son, and was now teaching English in Morocco.
On May 26, 2004, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that reports indicated that el-Shukrijumah was one of seven al-Qaeda members who were planning terrorist actions for the summer or fall of 2004. The other alleged terrorists listed on that date were Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (who was later captured in Pakistan), Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, and Amer el-Maati, Aafia Siddiqui, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, and Abderraouf Jdey. The first two had been listed as FBI Most Wanted Terrorists since 2001, indicted for their roles in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. Jdey had already been on the FBI's "Seeking Information" wanted list since inception on January 17, 2002, to which el-Shukrijumah had also been later added, and the other three as well.
Ashcroft alleged that Shukrijumah had specifically "scouted sites" in New York City and around the Panama Canal for terrorist attack.
On June 30, it was announced by the Honduran Security Ministry that el-Shukrijumah had been in Honduras during the previous month meeting with members of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang.
That September, the Aviation Security Association claimed that a Japanese flight attendant had confronted el-Shukrijumah while he had been acting strangely at Kansai International Airport. -- Wikipedia
In 2005, Joseph Farrah reported that el-Shukrijumah, along with fellow al-Qaida sleeper agents Anas al-Liby, Jaber A. Elbaneh, and Amer el-Matti, were sent to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a facility that boasted a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor, the largest reactor of any educational facility in Canada.
At McMaster, where they may have enrolled under aliases, el-Shukrijumah and his associates reportedly wasted no time in gaining access to the nuclear reactor and stealing more than 180 pounds of nuclear waste for the creation of radiological bombs.
In 2006, it was reported that an Internet café owner [location unknown] recognized el-Shukrijumah from photos in the newspaper. Police arrived at the café just after the suspect had left. He apparently was speaking in English, and a little in Spanish and French. The suspect was seen with two bearded individuals who "had a rough appearance."
In June 2007, the New York Post claimed that Shukrijumah was "Al Qaeda's operations leader on a nuclear terror plot targeting the United States" stating that Osama bin Laden had chosen him "to detonate nuclear bombs simultaneously in several U.S. cities."
Since the alleged café sighting, nothing has being heard of el-Shukrijumah, until now.
Dateline 2009, el-Shukrijumah is reportedly on the move again - and he may be using a Saudi diplomatic passport. -- The story continues at The Daily Beast.
Related: Stratfor (2005): The Unlikely Possibility of an 'American Hiroshima'
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