Al-Rimi had claimed responsibility for a shooting at a Florida naval base, where a Saudi aviation trainee killed three American sailors

This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

Donald Trump confirmed on Thursday that a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen killed Qassim al-Rimi, an al-Qaida leader who claimed responsibility for last year’s deadly shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola, where a Saudi aviation trainee killed three American sailors.

Unconfirmed reports of his death, including indicative tweets from the president, have been circulating since 31 January, but the neither the Department of Defense nor the CIA had issued official confirmation.

Al-Rimi was a founder of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The affiliate has long been considered the global network’s most dangerous branch for its attempts to carry out attacks on the US mainland. Trump said the US and its allies were safer as a result of his death.

Trump appears to confirm killing of al-Qaida leader in Yemen Read more

“We will continue to protect the American people by tracking down and eliminating terrorists who seek to do us harm,“ Trump said.

While Trump confirmed reports that al-Rimi had been killed, he did not say when the US operation was conducted or offer any details about how it was carried out.

But in late January, a suspected US drone strike destroyed a building housing al-Qaida militants in eastern Yemen. Also on 1 February, Trump retweeted several other tweets and media reports that seemed to offer confirmation.

Al-Rimi had said in an 18-minute video that his group was responsible for the 6 December shooting at the base. He called the shooter, the Saudi air force officer Mohammed Alshamrani, a “courageous knight” and a “hero”.

The shooter opened fire inside a classroom at the base, killing three people and wounding two sheriff’s deputies before one of the deputies killed him. Eight others were also hurt.

The shooting focused public attention on the presence of foreign students in American military training programs and exposed shortcomings in the screening of cadets.

In January, the US sent home 21 Saudi military students, saying the trainees had jihadist or anti-American sentiments on social media pages or had “contact” with child abuse images, including in internet chatrooms.

Al-Rimi was considered a potential successor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian leader of al-Qaida’s strategic operations who is believed to be in Pakistan.

In 2006, al-Rimi and other AQAP members escaped from prison in Yemen to establish what the US considered to be one of al-Qaida’s most vigorous local branches, orchestrating attacks on pipelines carrying oil and gas to terminals in the south of the country.

In 2013, in a message “to the American nation”, al-Rimi said: “Your security is not achieved by despoiling other nations’ security or by attacking and oppressing them.”

Americans should “leave us with our religion, land and nations and mind your own internal affairs”, he said.

Al-Rimi reportedly became leader of AQAP following a 2015 drone strike that killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi.

In 2017, days after a special forces raid on a compound in Yemen in which 31 civilians and a US soldier was killed, al-Rimi taunted Trump, saying in a recorded message: “The new fool of the White House received a painful slap across his face.”

In an attempt to prevent al-Qaida from establishing a secure base in Yemen, the US recorded 131 strikes there in 2017 and 36 in 2018. In that year, US officials said a CIA drone strike killed Ibrahim al-Asiri, a senior al-Qaida bomb maker behind the “underwear bomb” attempt on a flight on Christmas Day in 2009.

In January last year, a US strike killed Jamal al-Badawi, an al-Qaida operative linked to the 2000 attack on the USS Cole while it was being refuelled in Aden.

Yemen has been gripped by civil war since 2015. Last week, Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, said the US was “alarmed” by a recent increase in violence in Yemen.

The violence “produces instability that terrorist groups and other malign actors can exploit for their own purposes”, Pompeo said.