Al Qaeda leader in Yemen killed, alleged al Qaeda leader arrested in Arizona

Yahoo:

The leader of al-Qaida’s Yemen branch is believed to have been killed in a U.S. airstrike earlier this year.

The New York Times said three current or former U.S. officials “expressed confidence” that Qasim al-Raymi, the emir of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), was killed in Yemen, although there was no official confirmation.

U.S. forces had been tracking al-Raymi for months, and there was a $10 million price on his head.

It is unclear whether the strike was carried out by the U.S. military or the CIA. Spokespersons for U.S. Central Command, the National Security Council and the CIA declined to comment.

For more than five years, al-Raymi, a native of Yemen, had eluded U.S. forces as he led what experts sometimes refer to as al-Qaida’s “most dangerous franchise.” If confirmed, his death would be “very significant,” said Mick Mulroy, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East until late last year.

“He’s a real bad actor,” said Mulroy, who is also a retired CIA paramilitary operations officer and an ABC news analyst. “This is a big win for us.”

Al-Raymi, 41, had been on the United States’ radar for years. After training other militants in al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, he returned to Yemen and became a commander of AQAP, according to the U.S. government’s Rewards for Justice website. In 2005 he was sentenced to five years in prison for planning to assassinate the U.S. ambassador, but he escaped the following year.
...

He was accused of leading an attack on the US embassy in Yemen in 2008.   Hopefully, this is another blow for the terrorist organization behind the murder of Americans.

Fox News:

A man the Iraqi government says is an Al Qaeda leader has been arrested in Arizona, prosecutors said.

Authorities in Iraq have accused Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri, 42, of killing two police officers in Fallujah in 2006 with other members of the terror group founded by Usama Bin Laden, Arizona federal prosecutors said.

Al-Nouri was arrested Wednesday in Phoenix and appeared before a federal magistrate Friday. The FBI and U.S. marshals arrested him after Iraq requested his extradition.

“According to the information provided by the Government of Iraq in support of its extradition request, Ahmed served as the leader of a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Al-Fallujah, Iraq, which planned operations targeting Iraqi police,” Arizona federal prosecutors said in a news release.
...

There have also been reports that three accused Muslim terrorists were arrested in Dallas, Texas with false Colombian passports.