Terror Quartet plots al-Qaida attacks

Al-Qaida has been unable to mount a major terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 despite several attempts but recent reports indicate that the network's top commanders are determined to hit the Americans hard. Four of these leaders -- Saif al-Adel, Mahfouz Ould Walid, Ilyas Kashmiri and Adnan al-Shukrijuma -- are reported to be in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, plotting new attacks and recruiting operatives for special operations.
Adel, a veteran al-Qaida chieftain and former colonel in the Egyptian army's Special Forces, moved to Waziristan in 2010 from Iran, where he had been apparently restricted since 2002.
A close associate of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, alleged mastermind of 9/11, Adel, a 50-year-old Egyptian, is one of al-Qaida's senior strategists who sat on its military committee.
He has been linked to the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole in Aden harbor that killed 17 sailors, and to the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa Aug. 7, 1998, that killed more than 200 people.
Adel -- real name Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi -- has a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and is wanted in the United States for allegedly training the 9/11 suicide attackers.
Ould Walid, aka Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, is a veteran jihadist who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1979-89.
Aged 36, he was a close adviser to Osama bin Laden before they became separated during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11. He accompanied al-Adel from Iran.
Arab intelligence sources say that the hard-line clerics and senior Revolutionary Guards officers who oversaw Abu Hafs and al-Adel during their sojourn in Iran allowed them to operate with considerable freedom and have access to sophisticated electronic communications systems.
The Americans mistakenly reported in January 2002 that Abu Hafs, a key military planner in the al-Qaida hierarchy, had been killed in Afghanistan.
Saudi-born Adnan Shukrijuma, 35, is one of the few al-Qaida leadership cadre who has actually lived in the United States. That makes him a key figure in the reported efforts to plan attacks inside the United States.