Mahfouz Ould al-Walid

Life The publisher of the magazine Al-Talib (The Student), al-Walid wrote poetry that attracted the attention of Osama bin Laden, and was invited to give spiritual lectures to mujahideen at Afghan training camps.

It was later suggested that he had traveled to Iraq in early 1998 in an attempt to meet with Saddam Hussein, but was turned away as the leader did not want to create problems for his country.

Later in 1998, the United States learned al-Walid was staying in Room 13 at the Dana Hotel in Khartoum, and President Bill Clinton sought to have him killed or preferably renditioned to a friendly country for interrogation. When a plan was finally made to capture him using another country's officials, he had already left Sudan.

In 1998, Germany began monitoring Mohamedou Ould Slahi's accounts, and it was noticed that al-Walid had asked him to spare some money twice, resulting in a DM8,000 transfer in December and one other situation in which he sent him money. He was initially labeled as being the same person as Slahi by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, who amended their list in June 2007 to distinguish the two people. It was later suggested they were brothers-in-law, cousins or cousins-in-law.

Ayman al-Zawahiri has credited al-Walid's book Islamic Action Between the Motives of Unit and the Advocates of Conflict as being one of the driving forces behind convincing al-Qaeda to merge with Egyptian Islamic Jihad in June 2001. He was said to be opposed to the attacks both because he feared that the Americans would respond with force, but also because he felt that killing American civilians could not be justified on religious grounds.

The United States accused him of entering Iraq again in an attempt to get Saddam Hussein to negotiate but stated that he was rebuffed on the same terms as his first visit.

When Shadi Abdellah was arrested in 2002, he cooperated with authorities, but suggested that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden were not as closely linked as previously believed, in large part because al-Zarqawi disagreed with many of the sentiments put forward by al-Walid for al-Qaeda.

Zawahiri continued to speak positively of the role al-Walid played in encouraging Pan-Islamic peace and cooperation.

In the 2008 Chilean book El Norte de Africa en la Intriga de al Qaeda, author Carlos Saldivia suggested that al-Walid was involved in the 2003 Casablanca bombings.