The charges were dismissed, though al-Adel soon left Egypt for Afghanistan, joining Afghan Arab mujahideen resisting the Soviet invasion under the banner of al-Qaeda forerunner Maktab al-Khidamat in 1988.

[12][11] al-Adel would go on to become the chief of newly formed al-Qaeda's media department, and was involved in the production of Osama bin Laden's videos which quickly found audiences worldwide.

He has provided military and intelligence training to members of al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan, and to anti-American Somali tribes.

[17] The 9/11 Commission Report states that in July 2001, three senior AQ Shura council members including al-Adel, Saeed al-Masri, and Mahfouz Ould al-Walid opposed bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri's decision to execute the September 11 attacks.

[18] Following the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, al-Adel was given secret asylum in Iran during which he was monitored by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In 2015, al-Qaeda made a deal with the IRGC's Qods Force to return Saif to Afghanistan, though he reportedly refused, stating a preference for maintaining Iran as his base of activities.

[14][5] Before Zawahiri's assassination in 2022, Saif al-Adel had become the effective micro-manager of field commanders of AQ branches in Somalia, Yemen and Syria from his communication base in Iran.

[24] He fled Egypt in 1988 and made his way to Afghanistan, joining the relatively small but well funded (and mainly Egyptian and Saudi) Maktab al-Khidamat, the forerunner to what would become al-Qaeda.

According to the University of Exeter professor Omar Ashour, the FBI's previous information on al-Adel had confused the biographies of two different members of al-Qaeda; 'Mohamed Salah al-Din al-Halim Zaidan' and 'Muhammad Ibrahim al-Makkawi'.

The real al-Adel, currently based in Iran, was a supervisor of Bin Laden's personal security and has been described as an "experienced professional soldier" within the jihadist movement.

[5] Several months before the 1998 embassy bombings, al-Adel was helping Osama bin Laden move his followers from Najim Jihad to Tarnak Farms.

The group had begrudgingly agreed to care for the troublesome Canadian 16-year-old, Abdurahman Khadr, since his father was away and his mother couldn't control his drinking, smoking and violent outbursts.

[31] On 9 September 2001, Adel was approached by Feroz Ali Abbasi, who said he was so impressed by the killing of Ahmed Shah Massoud that he wanted to volunteer for something similar.

In early November 2001, the Taliban government announced they were bestowing official Afghan citizenship on Adel, as well as Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, and Shaykh Asim Abdulrahman.

[35] He later learned that Asim al-Yamani, from Al Farouq training camp, and the elderly Abu-Abd-al-Rahman Al-Abiy had run to the charity's headquarters and begun rescuing survivors and pulling out the dead bodies.

[55] In October 2010, Der Spiegel reported that Adel was in the Waziristan region in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas between Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

[43] On 20 September 2015, Al Arabiya reported that al-Adel and four other captives were part of a prisoner exchange Iranian authorities made with AQAP in Yemen.

"[67] In February 2023, a report from the United Nations, based on member state intelligence, concluded that de facto leadership of al-Qaeda had passed to Saif al-Adel.

[20][23] We say to those who want a quick victory, that this type of war waged by the Mujahideen employs a strategy of the long-breath and the attrition and terrorization of the enemy, and not the holding of territory.

In February 2006, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point published a number of declassified documents from the Harmony database, some of which are known or believed to have been written by Saif al-Adel.

Regrettably, my brother, if you look back, you will find that you are the person solely responsible for all this because you undertook the mission, and during six months, we only lost what we built in years.In 2004, Adel was alleged to be the author of The al-Battar Military Camp, a manual that advised prospective militants about how to strike easy targets.

He discusses the War in Afghanistan, criticises the religious failings of the mujahideen and hypocrisy of Islamic scholars, and the failure of the Jihadist movement to learn from previous mistakes.

In August 2015, a eulogy written by al-Adel for Abu Khalid al-Suri, an al-Qaeda veteran who served as both a senior figure in the Syrian opposition group Ahrar al-Sham and as Ayman al Zawahiri's representative in Syria, was released.

For the first time publishing under his real name Muhammad Salah al-Din Zaydan he outlines a radical new strategy for Al-Qaeda and global Jihad.