Hardly anyone has been rumored dead as often as al
Qaeda's No. 2 man in Yemen.
Said al-Shihri has emerged from
the aftermath of drone strikes in the past to lambast the CIA for trying to kill
him.
It seems it finally did.
A message on jihadi websites
announced his death Tuesday. It was purportedly posted by Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
It did not say when or where
al-Shihri died, just that a U.S. drone took his life sometime after the first
week of April.
Al-Shihri's career as a terrorist
leader has its roots in the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He was released in 2008 to his
native Saudi Arabia under the condition that he not travel outside the
country.
He quickly disobeyed the order to
join a fellow former Guantanamo inmate with AQAP in Yemen, where he climbed to
the number two slot in 2009.
The CIA promptly put drones in
the air with him in its crosshairs, and Yemeni authorities erroneously reported
deadly direct hits.
Shortly afterward, al-Shihri
would pop up on jihadist websites to correct the reports.
The occurrences repeated
themselves -- most recently, in January.
In April, al-Shihri issued a
threat to the Saudi royal family for allegedly conspiring with American
"crusaders" against "the faithful people of Yemen."
The jihadi statement said the
airstrike killed him sometime after that.
