Qasim al-Raymi Appointed New Leader After Nasir al-Wuhayshi Killed in Yemen

(New York, NY) -- The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) today released new resources on Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, and his announced successor,Qasim al-Raymi.

Al-Wuhayshi’s death is a substantial setback for the al-Qaeda affiliate regarded by U.S. officials as the most lethal. He pushed the group to engineer repeated terror plots against the U.S., including the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner in December 2009. Al-Wuhayshi was also the mastermind behind the attacks in January at the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Al-Wuhayshi oversaw the 2009 merger of the Yemeni and Saudi al-Qaeda branches that formed AQAP and in 2013 was chosen by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as his second in command.

Qasim al-Raymi is a senior military commander of AQAP and has been instrumental in recruiting the current generation of AQAP militants. Along with al-Wuhayshi, al-Raymi escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006 and immediately set about rebuilding al-Qaeda in Yemen. In 2010, the United States declared al-Raymi a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Al-Raymi has been erroneously reported killed numerous times—including by a U.S. airstrike in June 2010.

To learn more about Nasir al-Wuhayshi, click here.

To learn more about Qasim al-Raymi, click here.

To explore the interactive map and database of the world’s most notorious extremist leaders, propagandists, financiers and their organizations, click here.