Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar (), also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri (; 29 April 1953 in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

– 28 July 2008 in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

) was a chemist and alleged top bomb maker for

al-Qaeda , image = Flag of Jihad.svg , caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions , founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden , leaders = {{Plainlist, * Osama bin Lad ...

and part of

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...

's inner circle. The United States had a $5 million bounty on his head. Although reported to have been killed in a U.S. attack in January 2006, he survived and intelligence officials believe he went on to attempt to resurrect al-Qaeda's program to develop or obtain

weapons of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a Biological agent, biological, chemical weapon, chemical, Radiological weapon, radiological, nuclear weapon, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great dam ...

. On 28 July 2008, Mursi was killed in an American drone attack in South Waziristan, Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda activities

Umar is believed by U.S. authorities to have run the infamous

Derunta training camp The Darunta training camp ''(also transliterated as Derunta)'' was one of the most well-known of many military Afghan training camp, training camps that have been alleged to have been affiliated with al Qaeda. Training with poisons CNN publish ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

where he is reported to have used

dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the gray wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it was selectively bred from a population of wolves during the Late Pleistocene by hunter-gatherers. ...

s and other animals for his

chemical A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...

experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...

s. He is also alleged to have written an explosives manual, and to have personally trained Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber", as well as

Zacarias Moussaoui Zacarias Moussaoui (, '; born 30 May 1968) is a French member of al-Qaeda who pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to conspiring to kill citizens of the United States as part of the 9/11 attacks. He is serving life imprisonment without the ...

. The manual is still in use by al-Qaeda operatives today.

Wrong photo

The

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

acknowledged on 26 January 2006 that they had been using a photo of Abu Hamza al-Masri in their wanted photo for Midhat Mursi, who shared the similar alias "Abu Khabab al Masri". Mursi's poster at the

Rewards for Justice Program Rewards for Justice Program (RFJ) is United States Department of State's national security interagency program that offers reward for information leading to the location or an arrest of leaders of terrorist groups, financiers of terrorism, inclu ...

was changed to a different photo.

Misreported death

He was reported to have been killed in the Damadola airstrike in

on 13 January 2006 along with several other al-Qaeda operatives. The target of the strike was

Ayman al-Zawahiri Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri (; 19 June 195131 July 2022) was an Egyptian-born pan-Islamism, pan-Islamist militant and physician who served as the second general emir of al-Qaeda from June 2011 until Killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, his dea ...

, al-Qaeda's then-number 2 man. Pakistani intelligence originally confirmed Mursi's death in the airstrike along with al-Zawahiri's alleged son-in-law, Abdul Rehman al-Maghribi, but on 8 September 2007, the ''Washington Post'', citing "U.S. and Pakistani officials", said that all the dead in that raid had been locals.

Death

On 28 July 2008,

the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...

confirmed al-Masri was killed in a missile strike in

that also killed five other militants including Ibrahim, the son of Ahmad Salama Mabruk.

Family

Mursi's son, Mohammed al-Masri, was born in 1980 in

Aqaba Aqaba ( , ; , ) is the only coastal city in Jordan and the largest and most populous city on the Gulf of Aqaba. Situated in southernmost Jordan, Aqaba is the administrative center of the Aqaba Governorate. The city had a population of 148, ...

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

. He has been associated with the

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist organization and unrecognized quasi-state. IS occupied signi ...

as well as al-Qaeda, though he has expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of the former.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mursi, Midhat 1953 births 2008 deaths Assassinated al-Qaeda leaders Al-Qaeda leaders Egyptian al-Qaeda members Egyptian chemists Deaths by American drone strikes in Pakistan Egyptian expatriates in Pakistan Arab chemists