Abu Osama al-Masri name by British press as mastermind of bombing in Sinai

This has been headlines in both the Sunday Times (behind a paywall) and Komsomolskaya Pravda in Russia

Журналисты назвали имя одного из организаторов взрыва на борту А321

Александр БОЙКО AlexBoykoKP

Исполнителями теракта могут оказаться члены подразделения "Исламского государства" в Египте [видео]

Вчера 22:56125

Abu Osama al-Masri: Portrait of the Egyptian terrorist suspected of downing Russian plane

National Post,

8 November, 2015

Six months ago, before he emerged as the prime suspect in the downing of a Russian passenger jet, the Egyptian cleric Abu Osama al-Masri issued a call for his followers to attack Egyptian judges.

“Poison their food,” he said. “Surveil them at home and in the street … destroy their homes with explosives if you can.”

It was a typical call to targeted local violence for a terrorist leader who for years has been fighting Egyptian forces on one side and attacking Israelis on the other, as he preaches an apocalyptic Salafism to the Bedouin people of the Sinai peninsula.

But in the year since al-Masri pledged allegiance to ISIL, rebranding his cell as a “province” of the self-styled Islamic State, the targets of his plots have gone global.

Despite uncertainty over the cause of the crash that killed 224, British government officials told the Sunday Times that al-Masri — a 42-year-old former clothing importer who studied at al-Azhar University, a top Sunni institution in Cairo — is a “person of interest” in the suspected bombing. They said elite British forces could be used to help Egypt or Russia in a “kill or capture” mission.

Egyptian investigators told reporters on the weekend they are now “90 per cent sure” a bomb was aboard the Russian Airbus A321, which broke up in midair less than half an hour out of the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, en route to St. Petersburg.

Evidence includes the cockpit audio recording, which registers a sound in the final second, thought to be an explosion, and images from an American satellite of a heat flash from the plane, but without the trail that would suggest a missile

One theory is that a bomb was brought on with food supplies. Lead investigator Ayman al-Muqaddam said other possible explanations include a fuel tank exploding, metal fatigue leading to structural failure, or overheated batteries.

In a claim of responsibility, however, al-Masri takes almost gleeful credit, while refusing to explain how he did it.

“We are the ones who downed it by the grace of Allah, and we are not compelled to announce the method that brought it down,” al-Masri said. The success of the attack, on the first anniversary of his alliance with ISIL, was a “blessing of our gathering under a single banner and leader,” he said, meaning ISIL and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Bagdhadi.

Before it became Wilayat Sinai, or “Sinai province,” al-Masri’s terror group was called Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, literally “supporters” or “champions” of the “holy house,” meaning Jerusalem, and much of its violence was directed eastwards, at the long desert border with Israel. In his own nom de guerre, Masri means Egyptian, and Osama may be a reference to Osama bin Laden, with whom he was previously allied.

Last summer, though, it released a video showing the beheading of four Bedouin people, whom they accused of passing information to Israeli spies to assist in drone strikes.

By then it had become clear a new alliance had been brokered with ISIL. It was confirmed when al-Masri ended a sermon on Eid al-Fitr with a prayer for the new caliphate, beseeching Allah to let them “conquer Baghdad, the rest of the country and the people’s hearts.”

Before joining ISIL, ABM had mainly been fighting Egyptian security forces, using roadside bombs to target suspected collaborators, and plotting occasional cross border raids on Israel.

Security in the Sinai has declined in the last decade. When Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egyptian President in the Arab Spring in 2011, many jailed militants were freed into this security vacuum, where Mubarak’s successor Mohamed Morsi allowed extremist groups to operate freely.

ABM was founded around this time, focused on Israeli targets such as a gas pipeline, and the tourist centre of Eilat, where it is suspected of involvement in a 2011 attack. After Morsi was ousted in the summer of 2013, however, several groups united under the ABM banner and turned their focus to Egyptian forces.

Their earliest communiques pay tribute to Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leaders. The alliance was not formal, but the methods were similar, such as in the 2013 suicide attack on the security directorate building at Mansoura, which killed 16 and injured more than 100.

We are the ones who downed it by the grace of Allah, and we are not compelled to announce the method that brought it down

ABM has even shown evidence it took down a military helicopter from the ground, and that it executed William Henderson, a kidnapped American oil worker.

Canada listed it as a terrorist group in April of this year, saying its primary objective was an Islamic state in Egypt, but has now “expanded targets to include tourist sites, Western interests, Western embassies, and the media.”

Now, with the beheading videos, ABM is behaving ever more like ISIL, which makes its suspected role in international aviation terrorism all the more ominous.

On Sunday, a new ISIL video praised the disaster, and said it was a bombing in retaliation for Russian air strikes on ISIL in Syria.