The leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), apprehended in Yemen, has been under arrest for several months, according to a United Nations (UN) report released Thursday (February 4).
Khalid bin Umar al-Batarfi, who led AQAP for just under a year, was arrested during an October operation in the al-Mahrah province city of Ghayda, the UN report said.
His deputy, Saad Atef al-Awlaqi, died in the same operation.
The report, filed to the Security Council from a UN monitoring team specialising in extremist groups, is the first official confirmation of al-Batarfi's arrest. It did not disclose his location or reveal any further details of the operation.
In October 2018, the US State Department's Rewards for Justice programme called for information leading to the arrest of al-Batarfi, offering a reward of up to $5 million. It reiterated this offer on February 7, 2020.
Shortly afterwards, on February 23, AQAP revealed it had appointed al-Batarfi as its leader, following the death of his predecessor Qassim al-Rimi in a US air strike in Yemen.
A history of extremism
Al-Batarfi, also known as Abu Miqdad al-Kindi, was born to a Yemeni family in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in about 1979, according to a March 2020 report published by Lawfare.
In 1999, he went to Afghanistan, where he trained at al-Qaeda's Farouq Camp near Kandahar and fought alongside the Taliban, the report said.
He crossed the border into Pakistan and eventually to Iran, where he was briefly imprisoned before being sent to Yemen. In Yemen, he spent two years in prison before being released in 2004.
In 2008, al-Batarfi rejoined al-Qaeda, and helped lead AQAP's push to seize territory in southern Yemen in 2010 and 2011, according to the Lawfare report.
In March 2011, he was arrested at a checkpoint in Taez, imprisoned in Sanaa, and was in 2013 transferred to a prison in the Hadramaut provincial capital of al-Mukalla, where al-Qaeda broke him out of jail in 2015, the report said.
AQAP, which has not acknowledged al-Batarfi's arrest, has faced internal setbacks in recent months.
"In addition to leadership losses, AQAP is suffering an erosion of its ranks caused by dissensions and desertions, led primarily by one of al-Batarfi's ex-lieutenants, Abu Omar al-Nahdi," the UN report states.
