FBI Most Wanted Terrorists - Additions To The List

Additions To The List

By 2006, more than four years had passed since the FBI had listed the original 22 terrorist fugitives on the Most Wanted Terrorist list. Of those 22, by then four had been qualified for removal from the list, due to death or capture. Also by then, some new high profile terrorists had qualified to be listed as Most Wanted Terrorists under FBI guidelines. Some of these new fugitives were wanted for indictments in attacks and plots that had taken place since the original list had been compiled. The original indictments had been for incidents only through 1998. But since then, the U.S. had become victim to at least two major terror attacks, which would generate some of the new indictments for the Most Wanted Terrorists, notably:

• USS Cole bombing in 2000, which killed 17 American sailors and wounded 40 on October 12, 2000 off the port coast of Aden, Yemen
• September 11, 2001 attacks in Manhattan, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania

In addition, after the original 2001 list had been compiled and released to the public, the U.S. had foiled and issued indictments for numerous other plots, involving some new listed Most Wanted Terrorists. Those notable other plots involved:

• The Buffalo Six, a Buffalo, New York cell, or Lackawanna Cell, exposed September 2002
• Palestinian Islamic Jihad, on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) charges for plots based from Syria since 1995
• Abu Sayyaf Group kidnappings and murders of foreign nationals in the Philippines

In February 2006, the FBI completed two groups of additions to the Most Wanted Terrorists list, the first such additions in over four years. On February 24, 2006, the day after adding two name to the list, the FBI added an additional six fugitive terrorists, for various plots and attacks. One of the entries was for an indictment dating back to the June 14, 1985, hijacking of TWA flight 847 by Hezbollah (see above).

Additionally, the FBI also added to the Seeking Information – War on Terrorism list an additional three persons, most notably, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the notorious leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This marked the first time that al-Zarqawi had appeared on any of the three major FBI wanted lists. On June 8, 2006, ABC News reported that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was confirmed to have been killed in Baghdad in a bombing raid by a United States task force. His death was confirmed by multiple sources in Iraq, including the United States government.