Ahmed Hijazi
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Ahmed Hijazi (d. 2002) also known as Kamal Derwish, was a United States citizen killed by the U.S. CIA during a covert mission in Yemen in November 2002. The CIA used an RQ-1 Predator remote-controlled drone to shoot the Hellfire missile that killed Ahmed Hijazi and five other suspected al-Qaida operatives as they rode in a vehicle 100 miles east of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. [1]
Hijazi may have been the ringleader/recruiter of the later convicted Buffalo Six, also known as the Lackawanna Six, a domestic terrorist cell of Yemeni-American United States citizens formerly living in Lackawanna, New York (near Buffalo). [2] [3]
After their arrests in September 2002, following four to eight months of investigations, the six cell members were charged with providing material support to al-Qaeda. The U.S. prisoners reportedly then cooperated with investigators, which may have then led to information targeting Hijazi later that year. The six cell members later pled guilty.
Hijazi was traveling with Abu Ali al-Harithi, a suspected mastermind of the October 12, 2000 USS Cole bombing which had killed 17 American sailors, and injured 39 others, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.
Officials said the CIA did not know that Hijazi was in the car before it launched the missile that blew apart the vehicle.
The George W. Bush administration, citing the authority of a presidential finding that permits covert actions against Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, considered Abu Ali al-Harithi a justifiable military target.
A Yemeni associate of the Lackawanna Cell, named Jaber A. Elbaneh, is now at large after joining a successful group prison break on February 3, 2006 in Yemen along with suspects in the 2000 Cole bombing. On February 23, 2006, Elbaneh was added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list along with a fellow Yemeni escapee, Jamal al-Bedawi, who had been under a death sentence in Yemen as well as under indictment in the United States, for his own role in the Cole bombing.
