Wa'el Hamza Julaidan (
وائل حمزة جليدان
) (born 22 February 1958 in
Medina,
Saudi Arabia) is one of the four people who founded
al-Qaeda in August 1988. (The other three were
Osama bin Laden,
Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri, and
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim.) He had previously (1984) established "the Service Office" or
Maktab al-Khidamat in
Afghanistan, along with bin Laden and
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. Many of the supporters of al-Qaeda were trained in the Arab military camps this trio set up in support of the
mujahideen resistance movement against the Soviet occupation.
He was the president of the Tucson Islamic Center from 1984 to 1985. In 1986 he left Tucson to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
For his role in al-Qaeda, Julaidan is under worldwide embargo by the United Nations. Al-Banshiri died in 1996, and Mamdouh Salim has been held since 1998.
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