Saif al-Adel

Mohamed Salah al-Din al-Halim Zaidan (Arabic: محمد صلاح الدين الحليم زيدان; born 11 April 1960/1963), commonly known by his nom de guerre Saif al-Adel (Arabic: سيف العدل, lit. 'sword of justice'), is an Egyptian Islamic militant who is the de facto leader of al-Qaeda. Previously an Egyptian Army officer, al-Adel fought the Soviets as an Afghan Arab before becoming a founding member of al-Qaeda. He is a member of al-Qaeda's Majlis al-Shura and has headed the organization's military committee since the death of Mohammad Atef in 2001. It is alleged (by unconfirmed accounts from various intelligence agencies) that as of 2023 he is living in Iran along with several other senior members of the group, though this remains unproven.

Once a colonel in Egypt's El-Sa'ka Forces during the 1980s, the Egyptian military expelled al-Adel in 1987 and arrested him alongside thousands of Islamists amid allegations of attempting to rebuild the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and plans to topple Hosni Mubarak. The charges were dismissed, though al-Adel soon left Egypt for Afghanistan, joining Afghan Arab mujahideen resisting the Soviet invasion under the banner of al-Qaeda forerunner Maktab al-Khidamat in 1988. al-Adel would go on to become the chief of newly formed al-Qaeda's media department, and was involved in the production of Osama bin Laden's videos which quickly found audiences worldwide. By the early nineties, al-Adel is thought to have then traveled to southern Lebanon with Abu Talha al-Sudani, Saif al-Islam al-Masri, Abu Ja`far al-Masri, and Abu Salim al-Masri, where they trained alongside Hezbollah al-Hejaz. Sometime after, al-Adel became a member of the AQ Shura council, and by 1992 had become a member of its military committee, then headed by Mohammad Atef. He has provided military and intelligence training to members of al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan, and to anti-American Somali tribes. Shifting to Khartoum in 1992, al-Adel taught militant recruits how to handle explosives. It is possible that his trainees included Somalis who participated in the first Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. Al-Adel also established the al-Qaeda training facility at Ras Kamboni in Somalia near the Kenyan border.