Abu Ayman al-Masri: US offers $5M reward in exchange for information about him

A large financial reward for anyone who provides information about the prominent leader of the terrorist al-Qaeda organization, Ibrahim al-Banna, also known as Abu Ayman al-Masri, and the Rewards for Justice program stated that the reward amounts to $5 million.
This announcement was also published by the US Embassy in Yemen on its Twitter account.
“The Rewards for Justice program is offering $5 million in exchange for providing information on Ibrahim al-Banna, also known as Abu Ayman al-Masri,” the announcement said.
Masri is a senior leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.
Since its inception in 1984, the Rewards for Justice program has paid more than $100 million to more than 70 people who offered tips on wanted persons.
Who is he?
According to Rewards for Justice, Abu Ayman al-Masri was a founding member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
He assumed command of security affairs in al-Qaeda and provided military and security directives to the leaders of the organization.
The American program indicated that Masri is the last surviving founding member of AQAP.
The Al-Qaeda-affiliated English electronic magazine Ilham published an interview with Masri in 2010, in which he described the September 11, 2001 attacks as “a good thing” and even threatened to target Americans around the world.
Before joining AQAP, he was a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization in Yemen from 1996 to 1998, before becoming responsible for the group's training and intelligence sector.
In 2017, the US State Department designated him a global terrorist, as a result of which all his properties and interests under US jurisdiction were blocked.
This was not the first time that the US State Department indicated its desire to arrest him, as Masri was added to the department's Rewards for Justice program “Wanted List” on October 14, 2014.
During the past years, security officials have repeatedly claimed that they killed Masri with drone-fired missiles, including in October 2011, when it was announced that he was killed in a battle along with six other individuals, including some who were alleged to be linked to AQAP.
The last rumors of his death were in 2018, when gunmen from the Nour al-Din al-Zenki movement in Syria announced on February 15 that they had managed to kill him.
Prior to rumors of his death in 2010, Yemeni security officials announced that they had managed to arrest Masri in August. A Yemeni newspaper at the time published transcripts of his interrogation in November 2010, and a personal file was published claiming that his full name is Sheikh Ibrahim Mohammed Saleh al-Banna and his nickname is Abu Ayman al-Masri.
They asserted that he had confessed during his interrogation that he was a member of the Vanguards of Conquest, a branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group, as early as 1993, when members of the group went underground after they were suspected of being behind the assassination attempt on then-Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedky.
Masri fled to Yemen in the 1990s as a member of al-Qaeda.
Born in Egypt in 1965, Masri was a leader in the Islamic Jihad group in Yemen between 1996 and 1998, and he was responsible for training and intelligence in the group. He was also an official in AQAP’s media wing.