Ibn al-Khattab

Samir Saleh Abdullah Al Suwailim (سامر صالح عبد الله السويلم ; 14 April 1963 or 1969 – 20 March 2002), more commonly known as Ibn al-Khattab or Emir Khattab (also transliterated as Amir Khattab and Ameer Khattab, meaning Commander Khattab, or Leader Khattab), was a Saudi mujahid emir, well known for his participation in the First and Second Chechen Wars. The origins and real identity of Khattab remained a mystery to most until after his death, when his brother gave an interview to the press. He died on 20 March 2002 following exposure to a poisoned letter delivered via a courier who had been recruited by Russia's Federal Security Service. For Muhammad al-`Ubaydi, scholar of militant Islam, his continued relevance is due to the fact that he was the internationalist Salafi jihadi fighter par excellence, being born in Saudi Arabia but fighting in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Dagestan, and finally in Chechnya, and he was able to speak, besides Arabic: Russian, English, Farsi, Pashto, and Kurdish, his charisma attracting fighters from different ethnic groups, while also being a pioneer of jihadi media, especially when it came to using videos for propaganda. Khattab’s background has come to question, with some sources placing his year of birth as 1963 in Jordan as well as his birth name being Habib Abd al-Rakhman Ibn al-Khattab, to a family of Circassian origin. Another account says Khattab was born in 1969 as Samir bin Salah al-Suwailim in Arar, Saudi Arabia, to a Bedouin father of the Suwaylim tribe, a tribal group found in Jordan as well, and a mother of Syrian Turkmen descent, and later in life Khattab would himself identify with both Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He was described as a brilliant student, scoring 94 percent in the secondary school examination, and initially wanted to continue his higher studies in the United States, even if he was already fond of Islamic periodicals and tapes as opposed to his siblings, to the extent they renamed him after the second caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab.