Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Al Yazid, background by Weasel Zippers

When 9/11 money man Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a.k.a. Sheik Saeed al Masri, died in May this year, national security analysts speculated on who would succeed him.

Now we know.  His name is محمد عبدالله حسن أبو الخير or Muhammad Abdallah Hasan Abu-al-Khayr or Abdallah al-Halabi.  Don’t you love how easy it is to understand Arabic naming conventions and terrorist aliases?  Let’s just stick with “Abu-al-Khayr.”

Abu-al-Khayr photo from Dar Al Hayat

In 1999, Abu-al-Khayr recruited terrorist Shadi Abdallah who was later put on trial in Germany.

At some point Abu-al-Khayr served as a body guard to Bin Laden and married into the Bin Laden family.  No press reports at the time this post was prepared indicated which one of Bin Laden’s 25 or 26 children Abu-al-Khayr has married.  Bin Laden has four wives, and since his fourth wife is 27 and Abu-al-Khayr is 35, that probably (and hopefully) rules her out as the mother-in-law.

Abu-al-Khayr appeared on Saudi Arabia’s 85 “most wanted” list in 2009.  As of yesterday, Abu-al-Khayr was designated as a terrorist financier by the U.S. Treasury Department and the United Nations.  This means that U.S. and other banks will freeze his assets, that Americans cannot do business with him, that he is banned from travel, and he is subject to an arms embargo from the U.N.

TFI Under Secretary Stuart Levey says the move “will help to ensure that that al-Qai’da remains in severe financial straits.”

Levey: I've gotta get my arms around this