Atef, Muhammad (c. 1944–2001)

A former Egyptian police officer regarded as being one of Osama bin Laden's closest advisors, Muhammad Atef (aka Abu Hafs; Abu Hafs el Masry el Khabir; Abu Khadijah; Sheikh Taysir Abdullah; Taysir) is said to have been a key planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. Atef, often described as the chief military commander of al Qaeda, died on November 15, 2001, during the U.S. bombings near Kabul, Afghanistan.

Little is known about Atef's early life. By the mid-1970s, he was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (al Jihad) and is said to have become a top lieutenant in that organization. Ayman al Zawahiri, who would later become known as the philosopher of al Qaeda, commanded the group. Islamic Jihad, which supports strict Islamic governance instead of secular government for Muslim nations, is often described as a major influence on al Qaeda.

After Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981, in a plot that al Zawahiri was involved in, Egypt cracked down on the Islamic opposition. Egyptian security officials held suspects without trial, torturing many of them, and members of al Jihad fled Egypt in large numbers. Atef went to Afghanistan, where he joined the fight against the occupying forces of the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan, Atef and his commander, Zawahiri, joined with bin Laden. The three men would become the dominant members of al Qaeda in the mid-1990s, when Zawahiri merged al Jihad with it. al Qaeda, an Arabic term meaning “the base,” is an international terrorist network that uses force and violence to achieve its goal of driving the United States from all Islamic countries, especially Saudi Arabia; it also serves as an umbrella group for other militant organizations. al Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

[Page 73]In the early 1990s, Atef followed bin Laden to Sudan. According to U.S. officials, while in Africa he and other al Qaeda members gave military training to Somali tribes that were opposed to the United Nations intervention in that country. According to a U.S. indictment, tribe members trained by Atef were among those who attacked U.S. and UN troops serving in Somalia as part of Operation Rescue Hope. Hundreds of Somalis and 18 U.S. Army troops were killed in the attacks in Mogadishu in 1993.

After being expelled from Sudan in 1996, Atef, bin Laden, and Zawahiri returned to Afghanistan. All three were later indicted in the United States for involvement in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, in which 224 people were killed and thousands wounded. According to the indictment, Atef was a major strategic commander in the attacks. He met with other al Qaeda members to plan the bombings and kept in touch with them by cellular phone. On August 7, coordinated truck bombs went off within minutes of each other at U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, cities separated by more than 400 miles. Four men with ties to al Qaeda were convicted in 2001 for various roles in the embassy bombings. Shortly after the embassy bombings, the United States declared that bin Laden and al Qaeda operatives were responsible. Atef handled media affairs for al Qaeda after the U.S. accusations, speaking by telephone and exchanging faxes with Western journalists.

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