– KHALED ABU BASIR

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* Khaled Abu Basir al-Jazairi (from Algiers), is a Belgian citizen from Algerian descent.

Khalid Abu Basir was described in 2005 as Amir of Al Qaeda in Belgium since 2002. He was the kingpin of a syndicate of the seven networks, manned mainly by militants from the Maghreb, veterans from the civil war in Algeria and members from the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat – GSPC. With another Moroccan-born terror operative, Khaled Azig, and the Belgian citizen from Moroccan descent Mohamed Raha, he was assigned in mid-2004 to rebuild the operational cells in West Europe and North Africa into thriving operational networks (see – Moroccan-Network). In the first stage, they were not given terrorist commissions; working out of Brussels, Belgium, Antwerp, Charleroi and Rimes, they brought the seven networks into sync and collected a pool of volunteers willing to carry out terrorist and suicide strikes.

Khalid Abu Basir was related to Ibrahim Afalah and his brother Mohammed Afalah, who was one of the Madrid Trains Bombing perpetrators, to Hasan El Haski and also recruited Muriel Degauque and facilitated her way to Iraq. 

The network received orders and maintained connection with Ansar al Islam in Iraq and Al Qaeda in Pakistan/Afghanistan mainly through Istanbul – Turkey and trough Damascus, Syria.

In early-2005, Khaled Abu Basir wanted to assign Khaled Azig with the mission of going to Afghanistan to receive three letters from Osama Bin Laden. (Ultimately, the mission was given to someone else, but the episode demonstrates that Azik enjoyed the confidence of high-level Al-Qaeda commanders). According to Khaled Azig, one of the letters dealt with “unifying the devout youth who desire Jihad in the Arab Maghreb under the banner of the GSPC”. However, at the last moment, Khaled Abu Basir expressed fears that the Iranian security authorities had already discovered Khaled Azig, who was due to cross Iran”s borders through to Afghanistan. Instead, he decided to assign the task to Abu-al-Bara al-Saoudi, a member of A -Qaeda responsible for collecting funding for the fighters in Afghanistan.

Khaled Abu Basir was arrested by the Belgian police in 06/2005, almost simultaneously with Khaled Azig in Morocco. In their investigation both fully cooperated with the authorities and assisted in the exposure of 7 recruiting networks in Europe, which were, at some point, to commit attacks against their residential countries in Europe.

Today (06/2009) the deeds or whereabouts of Khaled Abu Basir are unknown to the public.

 

 

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