One day after the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the FBI appealed to the public for information on the whereabouts of a former aide to Osama bin Laden who is suspected of having ties to al-Qaida.
Hamza al-Ghamdi, who served as a trusted member of bin Laden's security force in the period leading up to the 2001 attacks, played a key role within the terror network and operated in various conflict zones for many years, Special Agent Tony Molloy, head of the FBI's New York field office's Joint Terrorism Task Force, told Fox News Digital.
“The FBI has information about his involvement fighting and waging violent Islamic jihad in foreign war zones going back to the late '90s,” Molloy said.
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Hamza al-Ghamdi, a Saudi Arabian national wanted for questioning on suspicion of membership in al-Qaida, is a former bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, according to the FBI. (FBI)
Ghamdi is wanted for questioning on suspicion of al-Qaida affiliation and was bin Laden's bodyguard at the time.
“We know through his affiliations and through his friendships that give him direct access to these senior leaders that he likely has information that is historically relevant to our investigation and to our current investigation into global al Qaeda activity and attacks over the past 20 years,” Molloy said.
The FBI said Ghamdi, a Saudi Arabian like bin Laden, fought alongside the late terrorist leader against Russian forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Authorities said Ghamdi also took part in terrorist attacks in Tajikistan in the early 1990s and ran an al-Qaida guesthouse in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Hamza al-Ghamdi is alleged to have participated in armed jihad in various conflict zones, including Afghanistan and Tajikistan. (FBI)
In December 2001, he took part in the Final Battle of Tora Bora, a US military operation in eastern Afghanistan aimed at capturing or killing bin Laden, who was believed to be hiding in a cave. Bin Laden eventually evaded capture, but was killed by US forces while hiding in Pakistan in 2011.
Molloy said Ghamdi was believed to be somewhere in Afghanistan, possibly near the border with Pakistan, and the State Department had offered a $5 million bounty for his capture.
“He has a tendency to operate in unauthorized locations, making him difficult to locate and question,” Molloy said.
Not only was Ghamdi a member of al-Qaeda, he worked with some of the group's top leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks and killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan in 2022.
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Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan, appears on an undated FBI Most Wanted poster. (Distributed via FBI/Reuters)
“His death will deal a major blow to al Qaeda and degrade the organization's ability to conduct operations, including attacks on the United States homeland,” President Biden said at the time.
Biden said Zawahiri masterminded other attacks against the United States, including the suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, which killed 17 US servicemen, and the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed 223 people.
On October 12, 2000, the US destroyer USS Cole was damaged in a terrorist attack in Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 40. (Reuters)
Twenty-three years after the September 11 attacks, the FBI is still seeking to arrest those involved, the agency said.
“We do not forget,” Christy M. Curtis, acting assistant director of the FBI's New York field office, said in a news release Thursday. “Twenty-three years later, the FBI seeks justice for the victims of the September 11 attacks as we continue to hunt down those who would do us harm.”
Osama bin Laden's infamous “Letter to America” justified terrorist attacks against the United States. (CNN via Getty Images)
The FBI said Ghamdi was not the same person as Hamza al-Ghamdi, one of the terrorists who hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 and crashed it into the World Trade Center in New York City.
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Molloy said people like Ghamdi needed to be removed from the “global jihad battlefield”.
“The American people expect that. The victims deserve that, and we'll all be safer because of it,” he said.
