Al-Qaeda new planning chief's mom calls him "kind, loving, caring"

New York, August 8 (ANI): The mother of a Saudi-born American and allegedly al-Qaeda's new head of global operational planning, Adnan G. Shukrijumah, whom the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has termed "dangerous" as he is using his unprecedented familiarity with American society to plot attacks, has said her son is kind, loving and caring.

"It's not true, he's a kind, loving, caring boy," The New York Post quoted Shukrijumah mother, Zurah Adbu Ahmed, as saying.

According to Zurah, Shukrijumah does have very strong feelings about American policy as it pertains to the Muslim world, but that "doesn't make him a terrorist".

She claimed that although she has not heard from her son in many years and has no clue about his whereabouts, she believes he would never kill anyone because she taught him not to.

"If you kill one person it's like you kill a whole nation. He knows that well. He will not kill people. He is gentle and kind," she added.

However, federal officials in the United States say the former Broward Community College student who spent 15 years in South Florida with his mother and five siblings is in charge of planning attacks on the U.S. and other western countries, a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003.

The FBI named Shukrijumah as al Qaeda conspirator in 2003, adding that he became convinced that he needed to join the jihad following conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya in the 1990s. That led him to training camps in Afghanistan where he learned battle tactics and surveillance techniques.

Shukrijumah had a job assembling telephone components for Motorola. He was seeking new opportunity and flew to Trinidad a week before Sept. 11 to look into a new business venture.

However, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, when he called his mother, she asked him not to come home because she feared that Muslims were going to become targets.

Zurah now fears that the United States would try to assassinate him. (ANI)