Israel captures second al Qaeda operative Friday – in IDF raid of Hizme village northeast of Jerusalem

A Palestinian, he was recently recruited by the fundamentalist Islamist organization for terrorist attacks in the Israeli capital.
Last week, Jordanian intelligence briefed Palestinian Authority chairman Abu Mazen on the al Qaeda networks established in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which call themselves Salahedin’s Victory Brigades. He was warned that they had taken to using Palestinian women as couriers for moving instructions, weapons and explosives, a method employed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq.
A Saudi national, Abdul Rahman Al-Atwi, 36, who was first assigned an operation in Cairo, has been jailed in Israel for ten months. He was picked up at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan when he tried to reach the West Bank.
Wednesday, April 5, when Saudi foreign minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal told a news conference in Riyadh that he had asked the UN and Red Cross to obtain his release.
After apprehending him at the Allenby Bridge crossing last year, Israeli security services questioned Al-Atwi repeatedly to find out if he was a lone wolf or a member of a band of Saudi al Qaeda operatives, some of whom may have made it to the West Bank and Israel. Israel allowed American and Egyptian agents access to the prisoner for questioning.
The information emerging from interrogations was that Al-Atwi took the ferry from Saudi Arabia to Egypt and went straight to Cairo, where he rented an apartment in the upper middle class Al-Muhandiseen neighborhood. He appears to have been assigned to carry out an attack in Cairo. He was to await al Qaeda contact-men in the Egyptian capital for further instructions. For some reason, the plan was ditched and he was told to get out.
Egyptian security searchers reached the apartment shortly after his departure. There, they found his cell phone number. A phone call established that he had crossed the Suez Canal at Ismailiya and reached Sinai. The al Qaeda operative eluded an Egyptian security unit detailed to detain him. From Sharm el Sheikh he took a ferry boat to Jordan and disembarked at Aqaba. There, too, he slipped through the fingers of Jordanian security. It is believed that al Qaeda men on the spot secreted him north to the Allenby Bridge crossing, where he was finally captured by Israeli security before he carried out his presumed mission of a terrorist strike against Israel.