Background
Little is known about al-Asiri’s early life. He was born in 1982 into a religious and military family in Riyadh with four brothers and three sisters.
Little is known about al-Asiri’s early life. He was born in 1982 into a religious and military family in Riyadh with four brothers and three sisters.
The Saudi Gazette reported that Ibrahim had been imprisoned and released. His imprisonment was a result of an attempt to enter Iraq to join Islamist insurgents. On February 3, 2009, Ibrahim and Abdullah were named on a list of Saudi Arabia's most wanted terrorist suspects.
The list published by the Government of Saudi Arabia listed 85 individuals, 83 of whom were Saudis, and 2 were from Yemen. On August 27, 2009, Abdullah blew himself up in the Jeddah office of security chief Mohammed bin Nayef, after posing as a repentant militant. Abdullah died in the attempt, but Nayef survived with minor injuries.
Ibrahim is suspected of being the main explosives expert for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the bombmaker responsible for building the bombs in the 2010 cargo plane bomb plot. He is a likely suspect due to his history of creating explosive devices using PETN, including his involvement in the failed Christmas Day bomb plot. Evidence suggested the same person constructed both the Yemen parcel bombs and the device worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who attempted to ignite the Christmas Day bomb on a plane in 2009.
One of the detonators was nearly identical to the one used in the Christmas Day attack. On 24 March 2011 al-Asiri was added to the U.S. list of terrorists. He is wanted by the government of Saudi Arabia and is the subject of an Interpol Orange Notice.
Al-Asiri had been reported as possibly killed in a drone strike together with other AQAP suspects, among whom was the American-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, during the month of September 2011. However a Yemeni official denied that al-Asiri was killed. In May 2012, American security officials leaked their acquisition of a document describing how to prepare and use liquid explosive implants -- surgically implanted improvised explosive devices.
The implants would contain no metal parts, making them virtually undetectable by X-rays. Al-Asiri was reported to have been responsible for the development of the new weapon. On August 13, 2013, it was reported that Al-Asiri may have been seriously wounded in a drone strike which occurred on August 10, though the reports were never confirmed.
Al-Asiri was thought to have possibly been killed in a firefight on April 20, 2014. Yemeni troops recovered bodies to run DNA tests, but the tests were not a match. Al-Asiri's father is a retired soldier.
He has three sisters and, now, two surviving brothers.