Al-Qaeda Leader in Yemen Arrested – US Report

The Al-Qaeda’s leader in Yemen has, for several months, been under arrest. This is according to the United Nations report released on Thursday. This could be seen as a great breakthrough in the fight against the global jihadist threat.

According to the document, Khalid Batarfi, who is the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for just under a year, was arrested. The report said his deputy, Saad Atef al-Awlaqi, died during an ‘operation in Ghayda City, Al-Mahrah Governorate, in October.”

The report was filed to the Security Council from a UN monitoring team specializing in extremist groups, in the first official confirmation on Batarfi’s arrest following unverified reports.

However, the wide-ranging UN assessment, summarizing global potential jihadist threats, did not disclose the whereabouts of the militant leader or reveal details of the October operation any further.

But the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors the online activities of the jihadist groups, said, “unconfirmed reports” in October that Batarfi had been arrested by Yemeni security forces and then handed over to Saudi Arabia.

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AQAP disclosed that it has appointed Batarfi in his early 40s, as its leader in February 2020, following the death of his predecessor Qassim al-Rimi, in a US airstrike in Yemen.

Batarfi, a designated global terrorist by the US State Department in 2018, has appeared in numerous AQAP videos over recent years, according to SITE, and appeared to have been Rimi’s deputy and group spokesman.

Washington has considered AQAP to be the worldwide jihadist network’s most dangerous branch, waging a long-running drone war against the leaders of the group.

In 2019, AQAP claimed responsibility for the mass shooting at a US naval base in Florida, in which Saudi air force officer killed three American sailors.

The group also claimed it was responsible for the ‘pant bomb’ plot, in which an explosive device failed to detonate on a Northwest Airlines flight as it approached the US city of Detroit on Christmas Day.

A Nigerian man trained in Yemen tried to detonate an explosive device on a plane as it was about to get to the US city of Detroit.

The Sunni extremist group thrived in the chaos of years of the civil war between Yemen’s Saudi backed government and Shiite Huthi rebels.

Rimi had himself succeeded Nasir al-Wuhayshi, who was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in June 2015.