This has been repeated time and again.
Also, Abu Musab Al-Suri is also the architect of the ”lone wolf” strategy that seems to bedevil the thinking of so many analysts of Islamic terror. You have some saying it’s a sign of A-Q’s loss of power structure and ability to carry out spectacular feats of violence, while others write it off as random delusional violence, while in fact it’s a very dangerous but ingenuous tactic in an overall strategy.
Read more by Lori Lowenthal Marcus on the man and his tactics/strategy that is being spread throughout the Islamo-terror networks.
Al Qaeda in Spain founder obtained citizenship through sham marriage
Group’s one-time number four used marriage of convenience to get freedom of movement
On July 10, 1985 a young man about 1.70 meters tall, with fair skin, green eyes, red hair and sporting a well-kempt beard turned up at Madrid’s Civil Registry with a 29-year Spanish woman called Pilar Toledo. After a brief ceremony, the two signed their wedding papers and kissed each other. They wouldn’t meet again for another three years when they signed their divorce papers on November 11, 1988.
The young man was a Syrian national called Mustafa Setmariam, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, the founder of an Al Qaeda cell in Spain, and number four in the organization until the death of Osama Bin Laden. Setmariam sowed the seeds of radical Islam in Spain, spreading the Salafist word that would encourage other young men to set up jihadist groups to raise money and recruit fighters for the conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Setmariam had a $5 million bounty put on his head by the FBI after the attacks on the Twin Towers
The Al Qaeda leader, who had a $5 million bounty put on his head by the FBI after the attacks on the Twin Towers, was able to obtain Spanish citizenship as a result of his marriage of convenience, according to an investigation by the Spanish police that EL PAÍS has seen. His bride had no idea of his intention: to gain a residency permit that would allow him to move freely around Europe.
Photographs recently published by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York show that Setmariam was not lying when in the autumn of 2001 he told his followers that he had bade farewell to Bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and that he had been tasked with designing a new military strategy based on chemical and bacteriological warfare. The United States had just invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
More here. H/T: Fjordman