The key
ally of
Osama bin Laden, and author
of a book
Knights under the Prophet's Banner,
published in
Arabic in
2001.
You don't hear much about this book in the West
but basically he says that attacks on civilians
are OK because they live in democracies and
are directly responsible for government policies
which anger Arabs, according to an Associated Press
report.
Of course, the purpose of his jihad is well-known,
to drive the United States military out of Saudi Arabia and to force it to stop supporting Israel.
His entire immediate family was killed in December 2001,
but he is apparently still running around somewhere
in the Middle East (February 1, 2002).
September 17, 2002 We haven't heard anything from this guy for months and months, and he's written lots of books. Seems likely he's kicked the bucket along with Osama bin Laden. Whereas Mullah Omar is very much alive, but the problem is nobody recognizes him! According to an interview with Hamid Karzai anyway.
There's an article in this week's New Yorker quoting
al-Hayat that he got married recently, though "the
annoucement ... seems to have been timed to appear on
the first anniversary of September 11th."