A British spy had a key part in killing al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 attacks mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri, we can reveal.
An Afghanistan-based MI6 agent supplied information to help locate Zawahiri, who was assassinated in a CIA drone strike on Sunday.
The drone launched two Hellfire missiles which killed the 71-year-old as he stood on the balcony of a safehouse in Aghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
It was the home of a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, said a senior US intelligence official.
A security source said: “The MI6 agent played a key role and would have helped to ID Zawahiri at the location where he was killed.”
It is understood our spook’s information would have helped formulate the attack plan, said the source.
The operative has been providing intelligence to both British spies and the Afghan security service since before the Taliban takeover.
The FBI had been offering £20million for “information leading to the apprehension or conviction” of terror leader Zawahiri, who plotted the 9/11 attacks on the US with Osama bin Laden.
Nearly 3,000 people died in the 2001 attacks when hijackers crashed passenger jets into New York’s World Trade Center towers and The Pentagon.
The operation to assassinate Zawahiri, who took over leadership of al-Qaeda after US special forces killed bin Laden in 2011, was many months in the planning. US President Joe Biden was first briefed about a proposed operation on July 1.
Much earlier intelligence suggested that Zawahiri’s wife and children had moved to Kabul. They were previously thought to have been in Pakistan.
Aimen Dean, who has written about his 10 years as a MI6 spy, said our agent’s information will have been invaluable.
“It is clear with the precision needed to target the Hellfire R9X missiles against Zawahiri that human intelligence will have been key. It would identify his location and report on his pattern of life so that the drone knows where to be and at what time so it could use its weapons designed to kill an individual with little or no collateral damage.
“GCHQ and the CIA’s analysts in operations like this can and do work as a seamless team ensuring 24/7, 365 coverage of signals intelligence ensuring nothing is missed.”
Colonel Phil Ingram, a former military intelligence officer, said that the cooperation between the US and the UK was a perfect example of the nations’ special relationship.
