GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — In asserting final week that the chief of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, President Biden described the long-sought terrorist as “a mastermind” behind the united statesS. Cole bombing in 2000.
Mr. Biden additionally mentioned that al-Zawahri was “deeply concerned within the planning” of the assaults of Sept. 11, 2001.
There is no such thing as a doubt that al-Zawahri was the chief of a terrorist motion whose international jihad has killed 1000’s of individuals. He was the deputy to Al Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden, and took over the group in 2011.
However as a matter of historic accuracy, Mr. Biden’s phrases went nicely past how the federal government and terrorism specialists have described al-Zawahri’s report with regard to these two significantly infamous assaults.
Mr. Biden’s portrayal of al-Zawahri as a key plotter of the Sept. 11 assaults was echoed in lots of information accounts about his speech, together with in The New York Instances. Nevertheless it stunned counterterrorism consultants, as did the characterization of al-Zawahri’s function within the Cole bombing.
The remarks additionally raised new questions within the Sept. 11 and U.S.S. Cole death-penalty instances, which have been mired in pretrial hearings for greater than a decade. By Friday, legal professionals in each instances mentioned they’d formally requested proof from prosecutors to assist Mr. Biden’s statements.
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer who labored with Islamist fighters battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan within the Eighties and later wrote a number of books about terrorism networks and radicalization, mentioned he was puzzled by Biden’s portrayal of al-Zawahri and questioned the place the purported function got here from.
“Zawahri is a reputable goal,” he mentioned on Tuesday, a day after the president’s handle. “However the justification they gave yesterday was inaccurate. I doubt it. I strongly, strongly doubt it.”
The official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the delicate matter, defended Mr. Biden’s characterization of al-Zawahri’s report in relation to the precise assaults as correct. The Justice Division had charged al-Zawahri, together with Bin Laden and lots of others, as a conspirator within the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the official famous, including that the federal government noticed “a by line from that to Al Qaeda’s main assaults in 2000, 2001 and past.”
Throughout a briefing with reporters shortly earlier than Mr. Biden delivered his remarks, a distinct senior administration official described al-Zawahri as Bin Laden’s “deputy in the course of the 9/11 assaults,” which isn’t in dispute. That official didn’t point out the Cole.
Prosecutors in federal civilian court docket and within the navy commissions system at Guantánamo Bay have filed a number of indictments towards Qaeda operatives accused of serving to plot the Cole bombing. These paperwork are dozens of pages lengthy, laying out the federal government’s understanding of the members, conferences, monetary transfers and different strikes that made up the conspiracy.
They don’t painting al-Zawahri as a mastermind of the operation, a suicide bombing by two males in a skiff that killed 17 American sailors.
A Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is described that method in a death-penalty case at Guantánamo Bay. A C.I.A. profile on the time of his switch in 2006 referred to him as “the mastermind and native supervisor of the bombing in October 2000.” His costs point out al-Zawahri as certainly one of 26 members in a Qaeda conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism typically, however not because the mastermind.
A navy cost sheet filed in 2012 towards 5 Guantánamo detainees who had been accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 assaults talked about al-Zawahri just for his joint declaration of struggle with Bin Laden in 1998, in describing the group’s historical past.
Inside hours of President Biden’s announcement, former President Barack Obama used related language on Twitter, calling al-Zawahri “one of many masterminds” of the Sept. 11 assaults.
However protection legal professionals mentioned the language didn’t match the descriptions within the case at Guantánamo.
“The 9/11 costs, discovery and proof to date make virtually no point out of al-Zawahri,” mentioned James G. Connell III, a capital protection lawyer for Ammar al-Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is often described as their architect of the assault.
The senior navy protection lawyer within the Cole case, Capt. Brian L. Mizer of the Navy, mentioned that al-Zawahri figured in pretrial proof solely as a deputy in Al Qaeda, not as somebody who had a particular function within the operation.
Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who investigated Al Qaeda within the interval surrounding each assaults, mentioned al-Zawahri was not the operational mastermind of both plot. However as a senior chief, he mentioned, al-Zawahri helped set the strategic course for Al Qaeda’s main actions throughout that point.
“He was concerned in greenlighting operations and advising Bin Laden,” Mr. Soufan mentioned.
Particularly, Mr. Soufan mentioned, there may be proof that at a council assembly of senior Qaeda leaders, some opposed the Sept. 11 plot, fearing repercussions for his or her secure haven in Afghanistan, however al-Zawahri backed Bin Laden’s need to go ahead with it.
Emile Nakhleh, a retired senior intelligence service officer and director of the Political Islam Strategic Evaluation Program on the C.I.A., mentioned al-Zawahri was completely an necessary goal. “We don’t put $25 million on the top of a small fish,” he mentioned.
However he thought of al-Zawahri to be extra of a “strategic thinker of Al Qaeda.”
The senior administration official who defended Mr. Biden’s remarks additionally pointed to feedback by Kirk Lippold, who commanded the Cole on the time of the assault. Mr. Lippold mentioned on a information program final week that al-Zawahri, together with Bin Laden, had been “intimately concerned within the planning.”
However Mr. Lippold, who declined to remark for this text, didn’t cite any particular foundation for portraying al-Zawahri as intimately concerned within the planning. In his 2012 memoir concerning the incident, “Entrance Burner: Al Qaeda’s Assault on the united statesS. Cole,” Mr. Lippold talked about Bin Laden about two dozen occasions however didn’t point out al-Zawahri.
Mark Fallon, who was the commander of a Navy job power that investigated the Cole bombing and later oversaw investigations within the navy commissions system, mentioned he recalled hypothesis that al-Zawahri might need been concerned in planning each assaults, however he was not conscious of proof supporting a direct hyperlink.
“It’s simply not a factual narrative that they’re telling,” he mentioned. “It’s a speaking level.”
