Khalid Ibn Muhammad Al-Juhani

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are multiple individuals named some variation of Muhammad al-Juhani.
Khalid al-Juhani

(source: FBI)
Born circa 1975
Saudi Arabia
Died May 12, 2003
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Khalid Ibn Muhammad Al-Juhani was a member of al-Qaeda who appeared in videotape in which he promised a "martyrdom" attack. On 7 June 2003 a statement from the Saudi government[1] identified al-Juhani as one of twelve dead perpetrators of the Riyadh compound bombings. According to that statement the identification was based on DNA found at the scene.

The video was one of the "Atef Rubble Videos" found among the remains of the house of Mohammed Atef south of Kabul in January 2002. Four other suspects in these videos also made such promises of suicide attacks. These videos gave rise to the FBI Seeking Information - War on Terrorism list. The videos were shown by the FBI without sound, to guard against the possibility that the messages contained signals for other terrorists. One of the five suspects, Ramzi Binalshibh, was already known to the FBI. Al-Juhani and two others, Muhammad Sa'id Ali Hasan and Abd al-Rahim, were recognized and identified in Saudi Arabia. The fifth, Tunisian-Canadian Abderraouf Jdey, was identified a week later.

Ashcroft called upon people worldwide to help "identify, locate and incapacitate terrorists who are suspected of planning additional attacks against innocent civilians." "These men could be anywhere in the world," he said. Ashcroft added that an analysis of the audio suggested "the men may be trained and prepared to commit future suicide terrorist acts."

Khalid Ibn Muhammad Al-Juhani, along with three of the other four pledged martyrdom suicide terrorists, was later removed by the FBI from the official count on the main page of the Seeking Information list. By February 2, 2003, the FBI rearranged its entire wanted lists on its web site, into the current configuration. The outstanding five martyr video suspects (including Jdey's Montreal associate Boussora) were moved to a separate linked page, titled "Martyrdom Messages/video, Seeking Information Alert" (Although both Jdey and Boussora were later returned to the main FBI list page). Around this time the FBI also changed the name of the list, to the FBI "Seeking Information - War on Terrorism", to distinguish it from its other wanted list of "Seeking Information," which the FBI already uses for ordinary fugitives, those who are not terrorists.[2]

On January 20, 2002 the New York Daily News reported that when tape was discovered, and the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan contacted his family members were contacted, they said he had been left mentally ill by the years he spent in combat.[3] They said he spent three years fighting in Afghanistan and three years fighting Russians in Chechnya. They said he had first gone to fight when he was eighteen years old.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Saudi statement identifies al-Juhani as killed in Riyadh
  2. ^ FBI Seeking Information - War on Terrorism archive page, Internet Archive Wayback Machine, February 2, 2003
  3. ^ Brian Kates. "Terrorist wanna-be is called mentally ill", New York Daily News, January 20, 2002. Retrieved on 2008-04-04. "The suspect, Khalid Ibn Muhammad al-Juhani - who grins and caresses an assault rifle in the video - was described by family members as mentally ill "as a result of pressure he faced during the [Afghan] war" in 1992." 

[edit] External links