Ali Amin ‘Ali al-Rashidi, better known as Abu ‘Ubayda al-Banshiri, was born in May of 1950 in Cairo, Egypt. At 46, he was al-Qa’ida’s military commander and second-in-command when he perished in a ferry accident on Lake Victoria on May 21, 1996. After acquiring his nom de guerre in Afghanistan while fighting the Soviets in the 1980s, al-Rashidi became a founding member of al-Qa’ida. He was intimately involved in al-Qa’ida’s expansion to the African continent, as well as the operational planning of their activities there.
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