27 Facts About Saif al-Adel

Saif al-Adel is a member of al-Qaeda's Majlis al-Shura and has headed the organisation's military committee since the death of Mohammed Atef in 2001.

Saif al-Adel is currently known to live in Iran along with several other senior members of the group.

The charges were dismissed, though Saif al-Adel soon left Egypt for Afghanistan, joining Afghan Arab mujahideen resisting the Soviet invasion under the banner of al-Qaeda forerunner Maktab al-Khidamat in 1988.

Saif al-Adel would go on to become the chief of newly formed al-Qaeda's media department, and was involved in the production of Osama bin Laden's videos which quickly found audiences worldwide.

Sometime after, Saif al-Adel became a member of the AQ Shura council, and by 1992 had become a member of its military committee, then headed by Muhammad Atef.

Saif al-Adel has provided military and intelligence training to members of al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan, and to anti-American Somali tribes.

Saif al-Adel established the al-Qaeda training facility at Ras Kamboni in Somalia near the Kenyan border.

Saif al-Adel is currently under indictment in the United States, with charges related to his alleged role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.

Saif al-Adel has been tightening his grip over the AQ branches, promoting a loyalist base of field commanders and increasing his influence in the group's branch in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, while waiting to be officially declared emir.

Saif al-Adel has made attempts to shift AQ's central command to Yemen, a country where the group has long had a branch.

Saif al-Adel fled Egypt in 1988 and made his way to Afghanistan, joining the relatively small but well funded Maktab al-Khidamat, the forerunner to what would become al-Qaeda.

Saif al-Adel became an explosives trainer for new recruits and would stay in Afghanistan after the war to train members of the newly formed Taliban.

Saif al-Adel later escaped to Afghanistan and became a member of al-Qaeda.

However, the lawyer claimed that Makkawi was a different person from Saif al-Adel and had severed ties with al-Qaeda long ago.

The real Saif al-Adel, currently based in Iran, was a supervisor of Bin Laden's personal security and has been described as an "experienced professional soldier" within the jihadist movement.

Several months before the 1998 embassy bombings, Saif al-Adel was helping Osama bin Laden move his followers from Najim Jihad to Tarnak Farms.

Saif al-Adel recovered after four months, except for a slight effect in his left hand.

Saif al-Adel later learned that Asim al-Yamani, from Al Farouq training camp, and the elderly Abu-Abd-al-Rahman Al-Abiy had run to the charity's headquarters and begun rescuing survivors and pulling out the dead bodies.

However, according to Saad's family and an interrogation of former al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Saad and Saif al-Adel were being held prisoner in Iran when the attack took place.

However, according to Ghaith, Saif al-Adel never left Iran and was still under house arrest when Ghaith was captured in 2013.

On 16 March 2016, a Twitter account affiliated with al-Qaeda implicated Saif al-Adel as having been sent to aid against the Russian intervention in the Syrian Civil War.

However, Long War Journal reported that Saif al-Adel is still residing in Iran.

On 2 August 2022, a day after it was reported that al-Zawahiri was killed in a US drone strike, Saif al-Adel was still reported to be in Iran, which complicated his ability to succeed al-Zawahiri as al-Qaeda's leader.

Some evidence against bin al-Shibh came from a diary of Saif al-Adel found in Saudi Arabia in 2004.

Sayf Saif al-Adel is a senior Al-Qaeda military commander with a long-term relationship with Osama bin Laden.

The diary of Sayf Saif al-Adel was recovered during a raid in Saudi Arabia in 2004.

Saif al-Adel discusses the War in Afghanistan, criticises the religious failings of the mujahideen and hypocrisy of Islamic scholars, and the failure of the Jihadist movement to learn from previous mistakes.