karray

Kamel Ben Ali Karray

Kamel Karray, known as Abu Hamza, was born on November 11 1966 in Mahadbi, Tunisia, and was living in Germany at the time of the investigation in 1999. Among others he was part of a network active in Italy, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and with connections in other countries (particularly Germany), that participated in procuring forged documents, sending recruits to jihadist training camps in Afghanistan, and funding that enterprise, and also possibly planning terrorist attacks in Europe. Some members of the network were connected to the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
Karray came to the attention of Italian authorities following investigations on the jihadist cells involved in the war in Bosnia. He was in fact part of a cell responsible for the car bombing in Mostar in 1997. In this cell there were also Saleh Nedal and Zuhair Ahmed. It is interesting to notice that the latter was a member of al-Qaeda who would later contribute to the attack on the USS Cole, and who would be consequently captured and held in Guantanamo.
In the numerous calls intercepted it was found that Karray was involved in procuring forged documents (at least in one instance also to an Italian citizen). In the same period, July 1997, he also had contacts from Abu Yasser and Saif Eddine, who instructed Karray on how to inform new potential recruits on the camp in Pakistan, he expressly asked him not to send Europeans. In a phone call with Saleh Nedal, Karray also made a reference to a stolen car that he would bring at the drop they had decided.
Based on this evidence of Karray’s proactive role in the subversive and extremist network, the Court of Bologna requested his arrest in March of 2000.
Open sources indicate that Karray was imprisoned in Zenica in 2002 for the 1997 Travnik murder. After a period spent in prison in Bosnia, he was extradited to Tunisia in 2009, where he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but managed to escape after the fall of the regime.
In November 2014, he was arrested again on suspicion of being the mastermind of a terrorist cell active in Kebili and Oued Ellil, towns near Tunis.
Other sources: https://kapitalis.com/archive/53-societe/25531-terrorisme-arrestation-de-kamel-karray-ancien-jihadiste-tunisien-de-bosnie.html and https://shs.cairn.info/revue-strategique-2013-2-page-219?lang=fr

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