| Importance | Very High |
 | Affiliation | Al-Qaeda |
| Role | Financial Chief5 |
| Supervisor | Osama bin Laden |
| Affiliation | Al-Qaeda majlis al shura3 |
 | Affiliation | Al-Qaeda Finance Committee |
| Nationality | Egyptian |
| Alias(es) | Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad1,2 |
| Alternate Spelling(s) | Sheik Sayyid el Masry, Shaykh Sai'id, Sheikh Saeed al Masri |
| Possibly the same as | Saad al-Sharif6 |
| Place of Birth | Egypt1 |
| Gender | Male |
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| Narrative and Notes |
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| Reliable | Shaikh Saiid has been associated with al-Qaeda since at least the early 1990s. |
| |
| Possible | Shaikh Saiid al-Masri is said to have opposed the Sept. 11 attacks within the al-Qaeda organization. He argued al-Qaida should honor Taliban leader Mullah Omar's wishes to attack Jews, not the United States, and that he feared the U.S. response to such an attack.
He served as a member of al-Qaeda's shura council and economic and legal committees, according testimony government witnesses Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl and L'Houssaine Kherchtou during the 1998 embassy bombings trial.
He worked in al-Qaida's office on McNimr Street in Khartoum, Sudan, starting on June 9, 1993, according to al-Fadl.
In Sunday, Shaikh Saiid al-Masri managed al-Qaeda's payroll and paid al-Qaeda members, including al-Fadl, their salaries. He paid al-Fadl $300 a month. Al-Fadl aided al-Masri until he was replaced by Abu Dijana al-Yemeni and Abdallah Lubnani.
Shaikh Saiid told Khertchou there wasn't enough money to pay $500 to cover his wife's caesarean section. Khertchou described his reaction in court "if I had a gun I would shoot him at that time."3,4,5 |
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 | Questionable | A minority within U.S. intelligence believes Shaikh Saiid and another figure, Saad al-Sharif, are the same person.6 |
| |
 | Invalidated | Very little has been made public about this highly sought al-Qaeda figure, making him a favorite among a group of Internet conspiracy theorists who have confused him with other jihadists with similar names. Early, inaccurate reports about the paymaster of the Sept. 11 attacks are partially to blame: Shortly After Sept. 11, the FBI learned the partial name of one of the financiers of the attacks: "Mustafa Ahmed." Investigators speculated to reporters that he was the same as Shaikh Saiid al-Masri, because of al-Masri's known alias: Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad.
But it was later determined they were not the same: The 9-11 "Mustafa Ahmed" was Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, a Saudi who served as moneyhandler for Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Al-Hisawi is in U.S. custody; Shaikh Sayyid is still at large.
Again owing to the similarities in name, Shaikh Saiid al-Masri is further confused with a third figure, Ahmad Omar Saeed Shaikh, a British man of Pakistani origins who has been charged in connection with the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
These theories have gained significant traction on the Internet but have none within reliable sectors of U.S. counterterrorism services. |
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| Sources |
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| 1 U.N. Press Release AFG/150, Oct. 8, 2001. |
| 2 President Bush's Executive Order 13224, Sept. 23, 2001. |
| 3 Jamal al-Fadl testimony, United States vs. Osama bin Laden et al, trial transcript, Day 2, Feb. 6, 2001. |
| 4 L'Houssaine Khertchou, USA v. bin Laden et al transcripts, Days 8 and 9. |
| 5 The 9-11 Commission Final Report, July 22, 2004, Chapter 7.4, and footnote 182. |
| 6 Source interview with author. |
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| Key to bullets |
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| High confidence |
| Some confidence |
| Low confidence |
| No confidence |
| Page maintained by John Lumpkin
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| Click here for a disclaimer and detailed explanation of the confidence ratings. |
