Al-Yacoub, Ibrahim Salih Mohammed (1966–)

In October 2001, Ibrahim Salih Mohammed al-Yacoub was placed on the FBI's list of the 22 “most wanted terrorists” for his alleged involvement in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers Air Force barracks near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The attack, attributed to the Saudi Hezbollah organization, killed 19 U.S. military service members and wounded approximately 500.

On June 21, 2001, the United States indicted al-Yacoub and 13 others for this bombing. The indictment claimed that al-Yacoub, who was born in Tarut, Saudi Arabia, was a prominent member of Saudi Hezbollah during the 1990s and that he was involved in recruiting new members and in planning and executing terror attacks. Al-Yacoub is also said to have worked as a liaison between his organization and the Lebanese and Iranian branches of Hezbollah. Members of Saudi Hezbollah, also called Hezbollah al-Hijaz, are mostly Shiite Muslim young men whose loyalty is to Iran, not to Saudi Arabia. The indictment states that, about three years before the bombing, Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil, the head of Saudi Hezbollah's military wing, instructed al-Yacoub and several others to begin gathering information on U.S. nationals and interests in Saudi Arabia. Al-Yacoub directed other members to survey possible locations for an attack that would drive the United States from the country.

[Page 25]Al-Mughassil eventually selected the Khobar Towers, which housed approximately 2,000 U.S. military personnel, as a bombing target.

According to the indictment, on the evening of June 25, 1996, al-Mughassil drove a tanker truck filled with more than 5,000 pounds of explosives and parked it near the Khobar Towers. He and a cohort then jumped into a waiting getaway car and drove off, and the truck bomb exploded within minutes.

Fellow Saudi Hezbollah members al-Mughassil, Ali Saed bin Ali el-Hoorie, and Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed al-Nasser were indicted with al-Yacoub and are also on the FBI's “most wanted” list. Eleven of the men charged are in Saudi custody; three remain fugitives. The Saudi government has disputed U.S. jurisdiction in the Khobar case and has refused to extradite the men on the grounds that the attack was made on Saudi soil and was committed by Saudi citizens for the most part. A reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to the arrest or indictment of al-Yacoub is being offered by the U.S. State Department.