Got him! Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman killed in Pakistan

Got him! Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman killed in Pakistan

BY Bill Hutchinson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Saturday, August 27th 2011, 3:09 PM

Al Qaeda's No. 2 boss, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, dealing another devastating blow to the terrorist network, a U.S. official said Saturday.

Just four months after Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden was gunned down by an elite Navy SEAL team in his Pakistani hideaway, al Rahman was killed in Pakistan's tribal region, Waziristan, the official told the Associated press.

The official said al Rahman died Aug. 22, but would not say how he met his demise.

His death came on the same day an unmanned CIA drone bombed the Waziristan area.

The U.S. State Department had offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the capture of al Rahman.

There had been previous reports dating back to Oct. 2010 that al Rahman had been killed in North Waziristan, but those reports proved false when he was he was moved up to second-in-command following Bin Laden's death.

The Navy SEALs that killed Bin Laden on May 2 at his secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, found evidence describing al Rahman as Al Qaeda's operational chief.

A Libyan national, al Rahman has been a member of Al Qaeda since he was a teenager. He fought alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1990s and became the terrorist boss' trusted confidante.

Following the 9/11 attacks, al Rahman, believed to be in his late 30s, was appointed a leadership role in Al Qaeda, primarily serving as Bin Laden's ambassador to Iran.

Al Rahman "recruits and facilitates talks with other Islamic groups to operate under Al Qaeda," according to a State Department records.

In 2006, U.S. troops raided a safe house in Afghanistan and found a letter al Rahman wrote to Abu Musab al-Zargawi, the head of Al Qaeda's network in Iraq.

In the letter, al Rahman lambasted al-Zargawi for attacking Shiite Muslims and offending rival insurgent groups in Iraq. Al Rahmam warned al-Zargawi he would be replaced if he didn't shape up.

Seven months after al Rahman wrote the letter, al-Zargawi was killed by a U.S. air strike.

Just last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Al Qaeda leadership was on the run and the organization was on the verge of collapse.

"Now is the moment, following what happened with Bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them because I believe that if we continue this effort we can really cripple Al Qaeda as a major threat," Panetta said at the time.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]