Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah

Biography Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was born in the Gharbia Governorate of Egypt on 6 June 1963. According to Abdullah, he was once a professional football player for the Ghazl El-Mehalla team in Egypt. Having joined the jihadist movement during the Soviet–Afghan War, he was not allowed to return to Egypt, and remained in Afghanistan, joining Osama bin Laden.

Between 1996 and 1998 he operated training camps in Afghanistan for al-Qaeda. Abdullah was responsible for forging a passport for Mohammed Saddiq Odeh so he could get from Pakistan to Afghanistan and meet Osama bin Laden before the bombings of US embassies on 7 August 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 civilians and wounded more than 5,000 others.

He fled Nairobi, Kenya, on 6 August 1998, to Karachi, Pakistan. He was released by Iran in March 2015 with al-Qaeda leaders Saif al-Adel and Abu Khayr al-Masri in exchange for the release of Nour Ahmad Nikbakht, an Iranian diplomat who was being held in Yemen. A New York Times source said he remained in Tehran, living under the protection of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and later the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Maryam was also killed in the attack that killed her father.

Death The New York Times reported on 14 November 2020 that Abdullah, while driving his car in the Pasdaran neighborhood of Tehran, Iran, on 7 August 2020, was shot to death by Israeli Mossad operatives from Kidon, a unit informally known as the "Tip of the Spear", on a motorcycle, at the behest of the United States. Reuters had previously received similar information from a security official in Afghanistan, but could not independently receive confirmation of the Times reporting via US or Israeli officials. Iranian news sources at the time of his death claimed the identities of the dead pair to be of a Lebanese academic by the name of "Habib Dawood", who had ties to Hezbollah, and his daughter. Afghan news station Shamshad News also claimed his death.

Iran denied the New York Times report; its Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement that the United States and Israel sometimes "try to tie Iran to such groups by lying and leaking false information to the media".

“This exposes the regime in Iran as one that provides a haven for the organization that's most significant to the United States,” said a former senior defense official. "It's undeniably convenient for Iran to operate Al-Qaida against the United States because of sanctions or to exact a price for the assassination of Soleimani,” the official said,"

On 12 January 2021, the United States secretary of state Mike Pompeo confirmed the death of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah.