Another senior al Qaeda middle-manager taken down in Iraq; said to have ties to bin Laden and Zawahiri

Rafid Ibrahim Fattah, also known as Abu Umar al-Kurdi

Rafid Ibrahim Fattah, also known as Abu Umar al-Kurdi, was killed on March 27th by Coalition forces near Abu Ghraib. al-Kurdi was a seasoned jihadi of fifteen years and a well connected individual with ties to the Takfiri insurgent groups in Iraq as well as al Qaeda high command. A slide from Major General Rick Lynch's press briefing describes al-Kurdi as follows:

•Had ties to Jayshal-Islami, Ansar al-Sunnah, Taliban members in Afghanistan, Pakistani-based extremists and senior Al Qaeda leaders to include Usama Bin Laden and Zawahiri
•Traveled extensively throughout Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq over the past 15 years and formed relationships with Al Qaeda’s senior leaders in Afghanistan
•Given the title of Al Qaeda Ambassador and served as a liaison between terrorist networks, an operations officer who coordinated activities of terrorist groups, and security chief for a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan
•Over the past six months, al-Kurdi worked as a Jayshal-Islami Cell leader in Baqubah nd was allegedly involved in kidnapping an Iraqi woman

al-Kurdi also had extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization which spawned the modern terrorist organizations such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad, HAMAS, and al Qaeda.

Strangely enough, it appears al-Kurdi was detained by the Kurdish Peshmerga in the spring of 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, and divulged connection between al Qaeda and Ansar Al-Islam,and Saddam Hussein:

"Halabja [Northern Iraq] – Local security officials in Al-Suleimaniya warn that some members of 'Ansar Al-Islam' [previously named 'Army of Islam,' i.e. Jund Al-Islam], Al-Qa'ida and the Taliban who were driven out of Afghanistan by Operation Anaconda, have now joined the battle-front in northern Iraq… New information surfaces daily about ties between Ansar Al-Islam, bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. One of the security officials said that the Iraqi government has been providing secret financial support and training to Ansar Al-Islam in order to weaken the Kurdish opposition…" "Some Kurdish commanders are minimizing the danger of Ansar Al-Islam…" "The organization has only a few hundred fighters, but it controls several Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, close to the Iranian border and on the fringes of the area protected by the U.S."

"The information about the ties between Ansar Al-Islam and Al-Qa'ida came from Rafid Ibrahim Fattah {aka Abu Umar al-Kurdi , an Iraqi who was arrested by the forces of Jalal Al-Talabani [in northern Iraq]… He had fled from Baghdad in the mid 1980's and lived in a refugee camp in Tehran…"

Apparently al-Kurdi slipped the Kurdish net and was able to join al Qaeda's terror campaign in Iraq. al-Kurdi joins the long list of experienced al Qaeda 'middlemen' killed or captured, such as Suliman Darwish (Syrian), Abdullah al-Rashood (Saudi) and Abu Azzam and Abu Tahla (Iraqis).