Terrorists

From a brilliant mathematician and an assistant professor at University of California, Theodore Kaczynski became the notorious American criminal—Unabomber—who was responsible for mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23 in eighteen years. He was eventually caught and sentenced to life imprisonment after his anti-technology essay sent to the media was recognised by his brother.

A Gulf War veteran, Timothy McVeigh made headlines after carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. He defended his actions saying that he wanted to inspire a revolution against what he considered a tyrannical government. The bombing remains the most malignant act of domestic terrorism in American history. He was executed by lethal injection in 2001.

A mobster and drug dealer most wanted by India, Dawood Ibrahim heads the organized crime syndicate popularluy known as D-Company. He was named No.3 on The World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives by the FBI in 2011. He is wanted on the charges of terrorism, murder, targeted killing, extortion, and drug trafficking among other crimes.

 Imad Mughniyah, founding-member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and Chief of Staff of Hezbollah, was accused by US and Israeli officials for several kidnappings, assassinations and bombings, including 1983 US embassy bombings. Argentine government indicted him for 1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires. He was killed in Syria by a car bomb in a joint-operation of CIA and Mossad.

Mullah Krekar is an Islamic scholar and militant. He is credited with founding an Islamist armed group named Ansar al-Islam. Interestingly, he claimed that he was not aware of the various terrorist attacks organized by Ansar al-Islam. He is currently serving his sentence in an Italian prison after having been deported to Italy from Norway in 2020.

Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho was a Portuguese military officer best remembered as the chief strategist of the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon. Otelo assumed leadership roles after the Revolution, which ended the authoritarian Estado Novo regime in Portugal. Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho is still revered by Portuguese activists of the left, but is hated by right-wing activists.

Hesham Ashmawy was a convicted terrorist who formed his own network named al-Mourabitoun. Prior to his activities as a terrorist, Ashmawy served in the Egyptian Army and is believed to have orchestrated numerous terrorist attacks on state institutions. He went on to become one of the most wanted militants and was arrested in 2018. Hesham Ashmawy was executed in 2020. 

Jihadi John was a Kuwaiti-born British militant who is believed to have been the person seen in several ISIL videos that showcased the beheadings of numerous hostages in 2014 and 2015. In November 2015, officials from the US reported that John was hit by a drone strike and his death was confirmed in 2016 by the extremist group ISIL.

Eric Rudolph is a terrorist convicted for a series of bombings in the southern US between 1996 and 1998. He is also known as the Olympic Park Bomber. He was listed as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives for five years before being captured. He is currently incarcerated at the ADX Florence Supermax prison. 

Bangla Bhai was a Bangladeshi terrorist who served as the military commander of the infamous militant group Al Qaeda. He gained worldwide notoriety for terrorist activities such as bombings before his arrest in 2006. He was sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 2007.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a Soviet-born terrorist best remembered for planting two homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three people. Many people were injured and 17 of those lost limbs. He planted the bombs with his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the two killed a policeman after the FBI declared them suspects. Tsarnaev was killed in the ensuing shootout.

Al-Qaeda terrorist and Islamic preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, initially a university lecturer, had been involved in a number of terrorist attack plots, including one in which they had planned to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane. American-born Yemeni Awlaki died in a drone strike ordered by Barack Obama in 2011.

Called the ‘white widow’, British national Samantha Lewthwaite is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. She has been linked to the Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab and was reportedly involved in the 2013 Nairobi Westgate shopping mall terror attack. She is the widow of one of the four suicide bombers who carried out the July 2005 London subway terror attacks.

Known as the “20th hijacker” of the 9/11 terror attacks, Zacarias Moussaoui is a French al-Qaeda member who has previously lived in England and is equipped with a business degree. The only person to be convicted in a U.S. court for the September 11 attacks, he is now serving life in prison.

Chechen separatist Dokka Umarov later declared himself the emir of the Islamic Caucasus Emirate. Though a civil engineer by profession, he continued to indulge in criminal activities while working in Russia. He was eventually poisoned, and his body was found in a remote Russian area.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a Pakistani terrorist, who is believed to be “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.” A member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, he led al-Qaeda's propaganda operations for a few years. He is known by at least fifty pseudonyms. He was captured in 2003 and is currently detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Known as The Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman was a blind Islamist militant from Egypt. Though blind since childhood, he studied theology and went on to lead the al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmiyyah. He later fled to the US, where he was convicted of plotting several terrorist activities and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Omar Ismaël Mostefaï was a French terrorist of Algerian descent. He was part of the Brussels Islamic State terror cell, a group of terrorists accused of organizing large-scale terrorist attacks in 2015 in Paris and in 2016 in Brussels.