Top Al Qaeda leader reportedly arrested at Cairo airport

Feb. 29, 2012 5:02 AM PT

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REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- A senior Al Qaeda leader wanted for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa was arrested at Cairo International Airport on Wednesday, after arriving on a flight from Pakistan, according to Egyptian security officials.

Mohammed Ibrahim Makkawi, once a confidant of Osama bin Laden, allegedly plotted the near simultaneous attacks on U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that left more than 200 people dead. A militant Islamist for decades, Makkawi is linked to the 9/11 attacks and the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat following Cairo’s peace treaty with Israel.

Makkawi, a former Egyptian army officer, has often been described as a military and intelligence strategist and onetime chief of Bin Laden’s security detail. He’s known by the alias Saif al-Adel, which in Arabic means the ‘sword of justice.’

He’s written terrorist manuals, including one reportedly called, ‘The Base of the Vanguard,’ and trained militants in Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan.

‘Al-Adel is thought to be affiliated with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), and is believed to be a high-ranking member of the Al Qaeda organization,’ according to a wanted poster issued by the FBI. The U.S. has offered a $5-million reward for his capture in connection with the African bombings.

The wanted poster gives few other details about Al-Adel, listing his height, weight and build as ‘unknown’; his birth date is between 1960 and 1963, it says.

The Associated Press reported that the man arrested claims he’s not the Makkawi wanted by the U.S. and is the victim of a case of mistaken identity.

‘Speaking to reporters at the airport, Makkawi said he was not the senior Al Qaeda leader known as Saif al-Adel and that he had nothing to do with the terror group since 1989,’ the AP said.

The official Egyptian news agency, MENA, reported that the Makkawi authorities have in custody is the terrorist leader. It quoted officials as saying that he had intended to turn himself in after decades on the run.

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-- Jeffrey Fleishman

World Now

Jeffrey Fleishman

Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”