to help him. The al-Qaeda leader was savvy in manipulating tribal advantages.
Independently of each other, Nashiri and Khallad busied themselves researching the ports that bin Laden had sent them to. They noted the types of local boats used, the security in the area, and whether any U.S vessels docked there. They also traveled around, looking into purchasing boats and explosives. When they passed through Sanaa, they stayed at Bayt Habra, the al-Qaeda guesthouse. Eventually their stops there overlapped.
They knew each other well. Both were part of the Northern Group, and both had become al-Qaeda special operations people. In any case, with fewer than four hundred members, al-Qaeda was a small organization— everyone knew everyone else. During their conversation they learned that they were working on the same operation. It didn’t surprise them that bin Laden hadn’t told each of them about the other. Al-Qaeda operated that way: if one cell was broken, the others wouldn’t be compromised, and the mission could still be carried out.
They parted ways and completed their initial research, and then both returned to Afghanistan and reported to bin Laden. They had reached the same conclusion: no ports other than Aden hosted U.S. ships. Bin Laden told them to focus together on an operation in Aden.
Bayt Habra was also frequented by al-Qaeda operatives who were in Yemen to get fraudulent passports. Two of the operatives in residence with Nashiri and Khallad were Hassan al-Khamiri and failed Nairobi bomber Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali. When Owhali’s father needed to contact him in Yemen, he reached him at the guesthouse. Khamiri’s application for a Yemeni passport used the telephone number of the guesthouse as its contact number.
Nashiri helped Owhali get the fraudulent passport that he used for the 1998 East African embassy bombing operation. Owhali later said that while he was in the guesthouse, he overheard Nashiri discussing a plot to attack an American ship in Yemen with Katyusha missiles while it was in port.
In the summer of 1998, as the date of the East African embassy operation was nearing, bin Laden ordered Nashiri and Khallad to return to Afghanistan. He wasn’t sure what America’s response to the attacks would be, and he didn’t know if the United States would pressure Yemen and other countries that al-Qaeda operated from to crack down on its operatives; and he didn’t want to take any chances. Nashiri and Khallad did as they were told.
When they arrived in Afghanistan, bin Laden instructed them to help prepare Owhali and Jihad Ali (Nashiri’s cousin) for the bombings. Khallad secured plane tickets and made travel arrangements and worked with the young men on their martyr videos. On bin Laden’s instructions, he told them to say that they were members of “the Islamic army to liberate the holy places.” They hadn’t heard that before; it was something new, made up by bin Laden. Their first few practice recordings had to be discarded because each time they attempted to say the phrase, they started laughing. They had to redo the video a few times until they were able to get through the script with a straight face.
In January 1999, after U.S retaliation for the 1998 embassy bombings appeared to have ended, bin Laden told Khallad and Nashiri to return to Yemen. Now Khallad set up his base in Sadah, a rugged area near the Red Sea and the Saudi border. It is viewed as no-man’s-land and, with weapons and explosives readily available, is a major Yemeni connection to the Saudi smuggling market. Nashiri, in the meantime, worked with Taha al-Ahdal.
Nashiri and Khallad occupied themselves with collecting explosives, a process Khallad had started on his first trip to Yemen. He had enlisted the help of the well-known dealer Hadi Dilkum, whose Yemeni government connections made him a valuable ally. As Khallad was making these arrangements, bin Laden instructed him to try to acquire a U.S. visa. Another operation—the “planes operation”—was being planned, and al-Qaeda needed to get operatives into the United States for it. In April Khallad applied for a visa using the alias Saleh Saeed Mohammed bin Yousaf.
His cover story for the visa application was that he needed to visit a medical clinic in the United States for a new prosthesis. A fellow al-Qaeda member had connected him with someone in the United States who had helped him find a “suitable” clinic. As he waited for confirmation of an appointment, he continued to run the boats operation, as it had come to be called, with Nashiri.
Khallad also decided to get fraudulent Yemeni identification papers to protect his identity. He applied for the fraudulent ID under the name Tawfiq Muhammad Salih bin Rashid. Dilkum was one of the witnesses who swore to the authorities that the name was valid. It was at this time that Khallad also bought, using the same fraudulent name, the ID that Qamish had handed over to us. Using that, and with Dilkum’s assistance, he rented the space to store the explosives. Khallad also bought a boat in al-Mukalla.
In May, Khallad enlisted the assistance of an al-Qaeda operative based in Aden, Jamal al-Badawi. Khallad and Badawi had met and become close friends in Afghanistan. During their initial training at the Jihad Wal camp, Badawi had become very sick, and Khallad had taken care of him. From then on Badawi had felt a debt of gratitude to Khallad, and he had gone out of his way to help him whenever needed.
Khallad thought that Badawi would be of use in the boats operation. Not only was he an experienced fisherman, but he was a Yemeni and knew the Port of Aden. Khallad was sure that Badawi would readily agree to help him. The only problem was that they had lost touch with each other. Khallad knew to check the al-Jazeera Hotel in Sanaa, a favorite place for operatives to gather and socialize. On any given day, a couple of operatives would be there chatting and drinking coffee or tea. Khallad went to the hotel and greeted the operatives there. They told him that Badawi was working in the tractor business and could be found on the street where all tractor businesses were located; in Sanaa, companies are localized by type.
Khallad went to the street and found Badawi. The two men embraced. Badawi was pleased to see his old friend. Khallad told Badawi that he was working on an operation and needed his help, and Badawi of course agreed. Khallad told him that he needed a boat for the operation. It had to be approximately nine meters long, and it needed to look like the other boats in Aden so that it would blend in and go unnoticed. Badawi said he’d go to Jizan, Saudi Arabia, to get it. He explained to Khallad that among Yemenis Jizan was known to be an easier and cheaper place to find a boat of that size than Aden. It was a place where one could buy and sell repossessed and used boats. In addition, Badawi felt that from a security point of view, Jizan was safer. Aden was a relatively small community, and if Badawi turned up with a large sum of money to buy a boat, people would start talking, and the authorities might get suspicious.
Khallad also instructed Badawi—along with Badawi’s brother, Hussein al-Badawi, and another operative, Mu’awiya al-Madani, who together formed his initial cell in Aden—to go to the port and watch U.S. ships. They went out in a fishing boat and recorded how much time ships spent in the area. Nashiri and Ahdal did the same in al- Hudaydah. The two groups later compared information, calculating how long it took ships to travel from one part of Yemen to another.
At one point during these exercises, the Yemeni authorities picked up Nashiri, Mu’awiya al-Madani, and Hussein al-Badawi. The three were far out at sea and looked suspicious. They claimed that they were just fishermen who had gotten lost. The Yemeni authorities accepted their story and released them.
Khallad and Nashiri continued to work on accumulating explosives. When they had about five hundred to seven hundred pounds of materiel, they decided to move some of it from Sadah to al-Hudaydah. To effect the transfer, Khallad asked to borrow Dilkum’s car one night. It was the action that would lead to his arrest. After packing the car, he pulled over at a bank of pay phones to make some calls. When he returned to the car he found himself surrounded by Yemeni PSO officials, who brought him in for questioning.
When Nashiri learned that Khallad had been arrested, he panicked, thinking that the Yemenis had learned of the plot. He fled to Afghanistan to inform bin Laden. “To Whom It May Concern of the Brothers in Yemen,” the letter bin Laden sent the Yemeni authorities in response to Khallad’s jailing, was said to have reached General Qamish, who passed it on to President Saleh. Released, Khallad reclaimed Hadi Dilkum’s car, the explosives untouched.
The U.S. visa application that he had submitted before being jailed was rejected—not because of any terrorism connections but because of insufficient information on his form. Nashiri returned to Yemen with instructions from bin Laden. The al-Qaeda leader didn’t want Khallad in Yemen anymore because the authorities were now focused on him. He was “too hot,” and bin Laden didn’t want to compromise the boats operation. Khallad was instructed to transfer full control to Nashiri. Having put a lot of work into the operation and grown excited about its potential, Khallad was keenly disappointed, but it was inconveivable that he would ever disobey an order from bin Laden. Using a refrigerated truck, he helped Nashiri move a portion of the explosives from Sadah to Aden. In addition, he provided Nashiri with the names of all of his contacts in Aden, including Jamal al-Badawi and another operative, Salman al-Adani. Word went out that Nashiri was now fully in charge.
After he left Yemen, Khallad remained involved in the boats operation, acting as the liaison between bin Laden and Nashiri. To avoid detection, bin Laden never used e-mail or the phone, instead relying on a network of
