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Late on the night of August 7 this year, the Iranian news agency Fars broadcast the news of a double murder in Tehran. An old man and a young woman had been found dead in a car in a quiet and prosperous district of the Iranian capital.
They had been shot dead with multiple shots. The man was identified as Habib Daoud, a professor of Lebanese history, and the woman as her daughter.
Just over three months later, the New York Times arrives with completely new and spectacular information about the murders. The man is said to be Abu Mohammed al-Masri, one of the founders of the al-Qaeda terrorist network and considered the organization’s second man after leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The young woman is said to be Mariam, al-Masri’s 27-year-old daughter, who was previously married to one of Usama bin Laden’s sons, Hamza, who was killed in a US drone attack in September last year, on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mohammed al-Masri is said to have been a kind of mentor to Usama bin Laden’s son, Hamza bin Laden (pictured).
Photo: AP / NTB
The double murder in Tehran is said to have been perpetrated by two Israeli officers carrying motorcycles, on behalf of the United States.
If it was really Abu Mohammed al-Masri who was assassinated, this is a significant loss for al-Qaeda. al-Masri (“Egyptian”, a supposed warrior name) was actually called Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah and was born in northern Egypt in 1963. In the late 1970s, he traveled to Afghanistan as a volunteer to fight Soviet troops who they occupied the country.
In Afghanistan, al-Masri came into contact with Osama bin Laden. Together, they built al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization that was behind the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Destruction after the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya – an act that was behind the now-assassinated terrorist leader. Stock Photography.
Photo: Dave Caulkin / AP / TT
It was also Mohammed al-Masri who planned the coordinated attacks against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on August 7, 1998 in which a total of 224 people were killed. Since then, he has been wanted internationally by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with a $ 10 million fine to the head.
But so far there are a number of questions surrounding the alleged liquidation of al-Masri and his daughter. To begin with, the information could not be officially confirmed. The New York Times cites anonymous US intelligence sources.
Iran has categorically denied that the man killed was al-Masri. And there have been no confirmations from either the US or the Israeli side.
Otherwise, American presidents tend to be very quick to point out the killings of terrorist leaders: Barack Obama paid close attention to the removal of Osama bin Laden: the al-Qaeda leader was assassinated by American special forces in Pakistan in May from 2011.
And Donald Trump was not exactly silent when ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was assassinated in Syria last October, not to mention the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani earlier this year.
American soldier and FBI investigator in front of the destroyed American embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1998.
Photo: Brennan Linsley / AP
Another puzzling The circumstance is that al-Masri was staying in Iran. After all, there is a religious-ideological gap between al-Qaeda, which represents an extremist form of Sunni Islam, and Iran, which is the home of Shiite Islam.
Differences in the interpretation of Islam in some fields have led to hatred and violence: the terrorist organization IS, which is a spin-off of al-Qaeda, has even come to regard Shiite Muslims as the worst kind of apostasy, as prey free.
But according to intelligence sources the New York Times spoke with, Iran may have overlooked al-Masri’s religious stance and provided him with a haven from helping plan terrorist acts against US targets.
Read also: The hunt for terrorist leader Osama bin Laden
