By KATHY GANNON
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; 5:41 PM

FARM-E-CHAR, Afghanistan -- At the end of a dirt track _ shaded by trees planted by Arab fighters _ Islamic militants gathered in the early 1990s to drill in guerrilla tactics and hear lectures about threats to Muslims around the world.

A soft-spoken Egyptian known as Abu Ayub al-Masri stood out among them.

He had already risen through the ranks of Islamic Jihad in his homeland. He then helped train mujahadeen brigades that drove the Red Army from Afghanistan in 1989 and galvanized a generation of Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden.

Al-Masri's long talks on holy war captivated young Muslims _ perhaps some who would later join him fighting U.S.-led forces under the banner of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Now, U.S. and Iraqi authorities are struggling to learn whether al-Masri's life at arms ended in the desert west of Baghdad. The reports of his death, which emerged Tuesday, have so far amounted to a pile of riddles.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said Wednesday it attempted to retrieve the remains claimed to be al-Masri _ also is known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer _ but that its agents were blocked because the area was under al-Qaida control.

A group allied to al-Qaida, the Islamic State of Iraq, posted a Web statement that al-Masri was "alive and still fighting the enemy of God."

Such contradictions and cloudiness are nothing new concerning al-Masri. Accounts about his path to Iraq _ and even details such as his precise birthplace _ are covered in a thick patina of rumors and myths.

But the places along the way read like a list of extremist hotbeds over the past decades: the militant underground in Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq _ where he assumed leadership of al-Qaida after his charismatic predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed by a U.S. airstrike last June.

In fact, many experts believe al-Masri has intentionally remained in the shadows, choosing to be more of an operational commander rather than try to carry on al-Zarqawi's firebrand style.

"I don't think (al-Masri) felt it was necessary to create a personality cult for himself in the same way that al-Zarqawi did," said Ted Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. "He concluded that he'd be more effective without creating an image for himself."

Peter Bergen, who interviewed bin Laden and wrote a book about the al-Qaida leader, said of al-Masri: "It's striking to me what a low profile he has kept."

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."

Al-Masri also built a network of important and varied contacts.

Among his allies in Afghanistan were Rasul Sayyaf, an anti-communist mujahedeen who now serves in the Afghan parliament, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahedeen commander and former Afghan prime minister who now heads the militant faction Hezb-e-Islami.

But his most fateful meeting in Afghanistan would be with al-Zarqawi, who reportedly sent al-Masri to study advanced bomb-making techniques _ including the type of roadside explosives now striking U.S. forces in Iraq _ and used him to recruit new Arab fighters.

Another former mujahedeen commander, Mohammed Sharif, told the AP that he considered al-Masri a brilliant "military man."

"He was equal to 10 Afghans he was so brave," said Sharif, who first heard al-Masri call for jihad in the early 1990s.

The man who ran the former militant camp near Farm-e-Char said al-Masri was the mastermind of the 1993 ambush and killings of four U.N. workers in Nangarhar province. The aim, he said, was to drive Western organizations out of Afghanistan.

Farm-e-Char was closed soon after. Al-Masri relocated to Darunta, a sprawling training camp tucked in the hills on the outskirts of Jalalabad. Duranta was a key target of U.S. and British airstrikes in 2001 during the post-Sept. 11 attacks that toppled the Taliban and removed a safe haven for Islamic radicals.

"(Al-Masri) told us that jihad would not finish _ that Muslims should fight until there is freedom in Palestine and Kashmir and other Islamic countries," recalled an Afghan named Hashim, who attended al-Masri's lectures in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar and elsewhere.

"He was a good jihadi man and he would ask the students not to forget jihad and the poor Muslim nations that were waiting for our help for their freedom," added Hashim, who goes by one name, as is common in Afghanistan.

In April, the militant umbrella group Islamic State of Iraq posted a Web video calling al-Masri its "minister of war."

Al-Masri, who has a U.S. bounty of $1 million on his head, has made no public statement along with the announcement. But last year, he purportedly issued one of the most ominous declarations of the 4-year-old war.

An audio message _ claiming to be the voice of al-Masri _ was posted on a Web site that frequently carried al-Qaida messages and urged Islamic fighters to use Iraq to test "unconventional weapons" such as biological and so-called "dirty bombs" releasing radioactive material.

"We are in dire need of you," the message said.

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Associated Press reporters Kim Gamel in Baghdad and Sarah DiLorenzo and Lily Hindy in New York contributed to this report.