Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, Saudi Arabia’s most wanted al Qaeda leader who claimed recent attacks on the oil industry, is a hardened militant driven by revenge and hate for the United States and pro-American Arab rulers. The al Qaeda chief in the Arabian Peninsula is a veteran of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war between Muslims, Serbs and Croats. He was also one of a hit squad that tried to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa during an African summit in 1995, according to Mohsen al-Awajy, an expert on Islamist militants. He spent two years in jail in Ethiopia and was extradited to Saudi Arabia in 1998. He served two years at al Ruweis prison in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, where he was subjected to “intolerable torture”, Awajy said. “After his release he acted as an avenger... He is a killer,” added Awajy, an Islamist reformist who has tried to mediate between the Saudi government and militants over the past year to persuade them to lay down their arms. “He is shallow, very simple-minded. He has no political brain. He’s got the weapon and no mind to control this weapon,” Awajy told Reuters.
Muqrin felt that revenge against what he saw as U.S. policies hostile to Muslims and Arabs in the Israeli-occupied territories, Iraq and Afghanistan was a duty, he said. Twenty-two people, mostly foreigners, were killed last weekend in a shooting and hostage-taking spree against oil firms and Western compounds in the vital eastern oil city of Khobar. It was the second major attack on the Saudi oil industry, a lifeline of the West’s economy, in under a month and sent oil prices to record highs on fears of instability in the world’s leading exporter. The government said production was unaffected.
Al Qaeda has pledged to destabilise the kingdom, whose leaders it considers minions of the West, and to rid the birthplace of Islam of “infidels”.
An audio tape apparently from Muqrin vowed this year would be “bloody and miserable” for Saudi Arabia. Muqrin issued plans for urban guerilla warfare designed to topple the royal family. Muqrin’s group swiftly claimed responsibility for the Khobar attack. In his latest purported statement on Friday, Muqrin hailed the Khobar attacks as a “victory”. He also gloated over last month’s killing of five Westerners in a petrochemical complex, the murder of a German in Riyadh two weeks ago and an attack on U.S. military personnel near Riyadh this week. “The operation in Khobar was a new victory which God bestowed upon the mujahideen and which put the Saudi government in a deep crisis,” the statement, posted on an Islamist Web site, said. “It took the oil price to its highest levels of over $42, while Saudi Arabia is committed to America’s prosperity by providing oil at the cheapest prices,” it added. In Khobar, the body of a Briton was dragged through the streets behind a car, in an echo of the attack on the petrochemical site in which an American suffered the same fate.
Awajy said he doubted the statements were being written by Muqrin himself. Saudi Arabia has been battling for over a year militants loyal to Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.
Awajy, familiar with militant ideology, said there was no chance that Muqrin, who is on a list of Saudi Arabia’s 26 most wanted militants, would lay down arms. “This man...is like a wounded tiger. He has already decided to die but he wants to kill as many people as possible before he ends his life,” he said. “They (Muqrin’s group) are a minority of the minority but they are very dangerous.”
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Also more on Moqrin from NEIN:
1 June 2004 - Who is Abu Hajar Abdel Aziz al Moqrin
Throughout the past few months, a new Al Qaeda militant has emerged to the forefront in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Abu Hajar Abdel Aziz al Moqrin is widely recognized as the leader of Al Qaeda operations in Saudi Arabia. He has claimed responsibility for this weekend’s attack on the Oasis residential complex in Khobar, and for the attack on the Yanbo petroleum facility a few weeks ago.
But little has been published about this militant. What exactly is known about him?
Abu Hajar, or Hajar’s father, first made his public appearance on the scene in the Badr al Riyadh videos, released by Al Qaeda in the winter of 2004, and commemorating the Ramadan attacks in Riyadh in November of 2003.
According to the semi-official biography published by Al Qaeda, Abu Hajar has spent the last 16 years of his life in the service of Al Qaeda. Abu Hajar, who is reportedly 33 years old, has “served” in combat in Bosnia, Algeria, and Somalia, before assuming the reins of the operation in Saudi Arabia.
Abu Hajar was sentenced to four years of prison in Saudi Arabia, and was released after 2 years, with the sentence reduced for “good behavior”. He assumed control of the Saudi operations after the death of the previous leader in a shootout last year.
Moqrin dropped out of school at the age of 17, and went to Afghanistan, purportedly to join in the fight against the Soviet Union. He apparently received his paramilitary jihad training in the Al Qaeda training camps of Afghanistan. According to reports, he was in Afghanistan for four years, from 1990 – 1994.
While in Afghanistan, he was responsible for training operations in the “Governor’s Camp” near the city of Khost, Afghanistan, and was also involved in numerous combat operations. He left Afghanistan in 1994 to move to Algeria, to help train the Islamic insurgents in that country.
After leaving Algeria, Abu Hajar went to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he again was active in the training of militants as well as in combat operations.
He returned to Saudi Arabia, then made his way through Yemen, and on to Somalia where he fought with the militant groups against the Ethiopian forces. He was arrested in Somalia, and extradited to Saudi Arabia, where he was sentenced to four years in prison. He was released after two years on “good behavior”.
A month after his release, he made his way back to Yemen, and then to Afghanistan in 2001.There he joined combat operations with the Taliban against the American troops. After the fall of the Taliban, he returned to Saudi Arabia, to his home in the Swedish district of Riyadh.
He immediately became involved in the establishment of jihad training camps in the middle and western regions of Saudi Arabia. When Khaled Al Bin Al Haj was killed on March 15 in a shootout with the Saudi security forces, Abu Hajar assumed leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Abu Hajar was raised in the city of Riyadh. He is a high school dropout. He was married at the age of 19, and has one child (currently 10 years old) with this wife. According to the biography, Abu Hajar remarried without the knowledge of his family, and had a second child, who died before the age of 2.