Khorasan could pose bigger threat than IS

U.S. forces took advantage of the airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria to simultaneously target Khorasan, an Al-Qaeda affiliate that the U.S. says was plotting an imminent attack against the U.S. or Europe

PROFILE OF KHORASAN’S LEADER

April 24, 1981: Muhsin al-Fadhli born in Kuwait

1990s: Fights alongside Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Becomes confidant of Osama bin Laden and one of few senior militants with prior knowledge of 9/11 attacks

Oct 6, 2002: Thought to be main fundraiser for attack on French oil tanker MV Limburg in Yemen, which killed one crew member

2005: Designated by U.S. as “major facilitator’ for Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, killed by U.S. airstrike in 2006

Late 2000s: Spends short period in Kuwait jail for terror funding – goes on to set up
Al-Qaeda’s franchise in Iran

2012: U.S. accuses al-Fadhli of tapping his network of Kuwaiti donors to move fighters and money from Pakistan via Iran and Turkey to Europe, North Africa, and Syria

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Apr 2013: Al-Fadhli, along with group of Al-Qaeda veterans from Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan, dispatched to Syria by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri to recruit
Western jihadis and send them home to carry out attacks

Khorasan may include operatives who have learned from Ibrahim al Asiri – master bombmaker of Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula

Sep 22, 2014: U.S. launch strikes against eight Khorasan targets near Aleppo, Syria. Group said to be nearing “execution phase” of attack involving bomb that could pass undetected through airport security systems

Sources: U.S. State Department, UN, Longwarjournal

Pictures: AP, State Department