Sheikh Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (died 2 May 2011), also known as Shaykh Abu Ahmed, Arshad Khan and Mohammed Arshad,[1] was a Kuwait-born Pakistani al-Qaeda member and courier for Osama bin Laden.[2] According to secret documents, al-Kuwaiti was one of the few men Osama bin Laden completely trusted and was said to be his "favorite courier and right-hand man".[3] He sheltered and lived with Osama bin Laden for a number of years and was killed with him by a United States military team in May 2011.
Al-Kuwaiti was a Pakistani Pashtun who was born and grew up in Kuwait and spoke Pashto (in a cultivated, urban accent)[4] and Arabic.[5] He was a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and had reportedly given computer training in Karachi to the perpetrators of the September 11 World Trade Center attacks.[6] He was implicated in the attacks and received contact in its aftermath from Riduan Isamuddin (Hambali), who he provided a safe haven to and several of his close associates in his home in a quiet residential neighborhood of Karachi.[7]
A leaked Guantanamo document by WikiLeaks dated 16 January 2008 revealed that Mohamedou Ould Salahi had claimed that Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was wounded while fleeing Tora Bora after the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 and had later died from his injuries in his arms.[8] The document claimed he was a mid-level al-Qaeda operative who facilitated the movement and safe haven of senior al-Qaeda members and families. As a speaker of Arabic and Pashto he could communicate and move easily among both the Arab members of al-Qaeda and the Pashtun tribesmen of Pakistan.[5]
Contradicting the claims by Salahi that al-Kuwaiti had died in December 2001, in 2007, U.S. officials were reported to only then have discovered the courier's real name and, in 2009, that he lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan, using information collected from Guantánamo Bay detainees, notably from Hassan Ghul in 2004. From Ghul, the United States intelligence learned that al-Kuwaiti was also close to Mohammed's successor Abu Faraj al-Libi. Ghul further revealed that al-Kuwaiti had not been seen in some time, a fact which led U.S. officials to suspect he was traveling with bin Laden.
He was reportedly tracked from Peshawar by Pakistanis working for the CIA. "The National Security Agency reportedly tracked phone calls between the courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's relatives in the Persian Gulf to all numbers in Pakistan, and NSA surveillance eventually tracked Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's location in Pakistan via one such phone call", the AP writes.
"In August 2010 they tracked al-Kuwaiti as he drove from Peshawar to a residence in Abbottabad – and as analysts inventoried the compound's striking security features they became convinced that it housed a high-level al-Qaeda figure."[9]
Using satellite photos and intelligence reports, the CIA sought to identify the inhabitants of the fortified compound in Abbottabad. In September 2010, the CIA concluded that the compound was "custom built to hide someone of significance" and that it was very likely that Osama bin Laden was residing there.[10][11] Al-Kuwaiti was said to be one of the two tall fair-skinned bearded men who claimed to be ethnic Pashtuns and were known in the community to be living at the house and occasionally attended local funerals.
He went locally by the name Arshad Khan, and his brother (or cousin as some neighbors thought) went by the name Tareq Khan. They claimed to be from a village near the town of Charsadda, in Pakistan's northwestern frontier province, and obtained their wealth from a family owned hotel in Dubai and from his occupation as a money changer and that his purpose for such high walls was to keep out enemies he had encountered in his profession.[3] He was described as a "a friendly man from the tribal-areas".[3] He died during the raid on the mansion by the United States special SEALs team on 2 May 2011.[3]