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December 4, 2005
US: $5 Million Reward For Islamist Chemist
USA Today drew attention to Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, a senior al-Qaeda explosives and poisons trainer.
Midhat Mursi features on the US Rewards for Justice website, where a bounty of up to $5 million is offered for his capture. Mursi was born on April 29 in Egypt, in 1953, and was a graduate of Alexandria University in 1975. He left Egypt for Saudi Arabia in 1987, but reappeared in the 1990s in Afghanistan. He maintained the Darunta terrorist training camp, near Jalabad. The camp was sometimes called "Abu Khabab" after one of Mursi's aliases.
In the Darunta camp his work focused on development and training with chemicals. His camp was struck by US airstrikes on October 12, 2001, and Mursi and others fled the camp. He is now believed to be in hiding somewhere in Pakistan,
Since 1999, he had been producing manuals for manufacture of crude biological and chemical weapons. His work included gassing dogs in experiments, a viseo of which came into the possession of CNN in 2002. The gas in the dog-video is believed to have been hydrogen cyanide by some, a point denied by one NATO specialist, Rene Pita.
Midhat Mursi or Abu Khabab is thought to have been involved in the training of the individuals who attacked the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, which killed 17 US sailors.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 4, 2005 7:17 PM
Comments
Very interesting report but there is a transcription error from the original one:
"His most notorious work was recorded on videotape, eventually obtained by CNN in 2002, showing dogs being killed in gas experiments. Intelligence sources said a voice heard on the tape was Mursi's, the cable network said.
Experts believe the gas was hydrogen cyanide, used in gas-chamber executions. But NATO chemical weapons specialist Rene Pita says that compound has long been viewed as an unsatisfactory mass-casualty chemical weapon because of its instability and low density".
Posted by: Wong at December 7, 2005 9:45 AM
Thank you Wong! I hold my hands up. I do tend to sometimes shorten items.
Posted by: Giraldus Cambrensis at December 8, 2005 11:59 PM
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