Mamdouh Mahmud Salim

Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (Arabic: ممدوح محمود سالم‎, Mamdūḥ Maḥmūd Sālim; b. 1958 in Sudan) is an alleged co-founder of the Islamist terrorist network al-Qaeda. He was arrested on 16 September 1998 near the German town Munich.^[2] On 20 December 1998 he was extradited to the United States, where he is charged^[3] with participating in the 1998 United States embassy bombings.

Since then he has been convicted of attempted murder, after stabbing two prison guards and maceing others during an attempted escape. He was sentenced to 32 years for the crimes.^[4][5] In 2008, however, a Federal Appeals judge ruled that the judge in the case was in error when he ruled that the stabbing was not part of a terrorism plot. He ordered resentencing, and now that terrorism charges are involved, the new penalty could be life imprisonment.^[6]

He is now an inmate of the ADX Florence facility in Florence, Colorado (reg.nr. 42426-054).

Founding al-Qaeda in 1988

He attended two meetings from August 11–20 in 1988, along with Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, Jamal al-Fadl, Wael Hamza Julaidan, and Mohammed Loay Bayazid and eight others, to discuss the founding of "al-Qaeda".^[7][8]

According to Jamal al-Fadl, Salim instructed militant recruits in the works of Ibn Taymiyyah.^[9] Other allegations suggest he travelled to China, Japan or Hong Kong with Mohammed Loay Bayazid in 1990 to facilitate the purchase of communications equipment for the Sudanese government.^[10] In Khartoum, he travelled to Hilat Koko with Jamal al-Fadl in late 1993 or early 1994, and met with Amin Abdel Marouf to discuss chemical weapons.^[9]

He was arrested approximately September 8, 1998 in Germany, and extradited to the United States. However, his joint bank account with Mamoun Darkanzali was not investigated, and the latter transferred the funds to a militant who would later participate in the 9/11 hijackings.^[9]

Indictment for the embassy bombings

Salim's name occurs frequently in 157-page indictment, sometimes alongside the name of Osama bin Laden and no one else. According to the indictment

• he was a member of the majlis al shura of al-Qaeda
• he managed al-Qaeda training camps and guesthouses in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• he purchased land for training camps
• he purchased warehouses for storage of items including explosives, and purchased communications and electronics equipment
• he transferred funds between corporate accounts
• he transported money and weapons to members of al-Qaeda and associated terrorist organizations
• he traveled, on behalf of al Qaeda and its affiliated groups, to Malaysia, China, the Philippines, and Germany
• he worked with Wadih el-Hage in various of bin Laden's companies
• he helped to obtain communications equipment for the Sudanese intelligence service
• he made efforts [in 1993] to obtain the components of nuclear weapons
• in September 1998, he lied to German and American law enforcement re al-Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the embassy bombings
• in 2000, while under arrest by American civil authorities, he participated in the capture and assault of a prison guard (who was seriously and permanently injured) and tried to take other hostages
• several times around 1992 and again around 1996, he "met with an Iranian religious official in Khartoum as part of an overall effort to arrange a tripartite agreement between al Qaeda, the National Islamic Front of Sudan, and elements of the Government of Iran to work together against the United States, Israel and other Western countries".

References