Shadowy Trail of al-Qaida in Iraq Leader

This photo released by the U.S. Military at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, June 15, 2006, purports to show Abu Ayyub al-Masri who is the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Iraqi officials have received reports Tuesday May 1, 2007, that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was killed by Sunni tribesmen, but the chief government spokesman said Tuesday the information has not been confirmed. (AP Photo/U.S. Military) (AP)

But al-Masri _ or "the Egyptian" in Arabic _ has never been far from some of the most high-profile Islamic radicals.

Al-Masri left school in the early 1980s to join Islamic Jihad, a group fiercely opposed Egypt's Western-allied government and linked to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. There, al-Masri became a close confidant of Ayman al-Zawahri, who became bin Laden's chief deputy after Islamic Jihad merged with al-Qaida in the late 1990s.

A Cairo-based lawyer active in the Islamic movement, Montasser el-Zayat, said al-Masri was born in 1969 in the Nile Delta province of El-Sharqiya. El-Zayat said that official documents and court records give al-Masri's real name: Abdel Monem Ezzedine Ali Ismail.

Egyptian security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed el-Zayat's identification of al-Masri.

Other sources, however, have been less precise about al-Masri's age and birthplace. They also list a number of other aliases including Abu Ayyub, Abu Jihad, Youssef Hadad and Labeeb Hadad.

Some of these names were used to cross borders and obscure his movements as he drifted among the extremist outposts on the lawless border between Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than a decade beginning in the late 1980s.

One of the places was Farm-e-Char, in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar Province, off a dirt road under a canopy of trees _ an apparent gift from the Arab guerrillas who came to fight the Soviets and then stay on.

"The Arabs planted them. They loved them," said a man who claimed he ran another militant training camp for Afghans less than two miles from Farm-e-Char.

The man spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing he would draw the attention of U.S.-backed forces in Afghanistan. He provided The Associated Press with proof of his identity.

He pointed to the overgrown fields and ramshackle cement buildings where he said al-Masri would lead drills on urban warfare.

"I remember he would teach about how to use a motorcycle to ambush places. For example, look at that gate over there," he said.

"He would tell you how to go to the gate, distract one guard while the person at the back opens fire killing them all, then you can rush inside and the man at the back throws the grenades and keeps shooting while you escape."