Al Qaeda shows new interim chief says Al Jazeera

Al Qaeda shows new interim chief says Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera television said on Wednesday that Al Qaeda has named an interim leader and a new chief operating officer after the death of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces, citing a correspondent for the station.

According to a news brief on Al Jazeera, the Egyptian militant Saif al-Adel was named interim leader, while Mustafa al-Yemeni, whose nationality was not disclosed, would head the operations.

U.S. special forces have killed Bin Laden, Al Qaeda leader, shot in his refuge in a suburb of the Pakistani capital early this month.

U.S. prosecutors say Adel is one of the top military commanders of al Qaeda and helped plan the attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.

Prosecutors also said Adel coordinated the installation of training camps of al Qaeda in Sudan and Afghanistan in the 1990s.

An expert on Al Qaeda said on Tuesday that Adel probably would not act as leader of the organization.

"This position he took is not as overall leader, but he is in charge of operational and military," said Noman Benotman, a former ally of bin Laden who is now an analyst at UK research Quilliam Foundation.

It was believed that Adel fled to Iran after the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States, and was then kept under a kind of house arrest in the Islamic Republic, according to some information in press.

According to Arab media, Iranian authorities freed Adel about a year, and he then returned to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some analysts believe Adel may have returned to Iran or Afghanistan in recent weeks