AMMAN, 13 February 2004 — Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, wanted here in connection with the 2002 assassination of a US diplomat, is believed to be a top chemical and biological weapons expert for Al-Qaeda and leading an Iraqi affiliate of the terror group.

Zarqawi, 37, whose real name is Fadel Nazzal Al-Khalayleh, is a veteran of the Afghan war against Soviet occupation, a US-backed conflict in the 1980s that drew many idealists from around the Muslim world.

Years later, in late 2001, he was wounded in combat and lost a leg after taking up arms against the US-led forces who had launched a campaign to unseat the Taleban.

Al-Zarqawi, belongs to the Bani Hassan, one of Jordan’s largest tribes. He first left home, in one of Jordan’s poorest towns, to train in Al-Qaeda camps and join the anti-Soviet campaign.

Jordanian officials say he last left the kingdom in 1999, fleeing to Afghanistan, where he was given a promotion in the group headed by Osama Bin Laden.

Before the US-led invasion of Iraq last March, Secretary of State Colin Powell singled out Al-Zarqawi to support claims that Saddam Hussein was harboring senior Al-Qaeda leaders.

US officials said then that Al-Zarqawi took refuge in Iraq after US-led forces drove the Taleban from power in Afghanistan, and received medical attention there.

“Al-Zarqawi has had a long-standing connection to senior Al-Qaeda leadership and appears to be highly regarded among Al-Qaeda and a close associate of Osama Bin Laden and (his top lieutenant) Saif Al-Adel,” the State Department said last October.

Intelligence services have described him as a top Al-Qaeda expert on chemical and biological weapons.

On Wednesday, the US Army released a letter attributed to him by the US-led coalition in Iraq, branding it a “blueprint” for fomenting what the coalition said was a doomed civil war.

It also doubled to $10 million a bounty initially posted on him in October.

Top coalition spokesman Dan Senor said the 17-page document “clearly calls for unleashing civil war” between the Shiites and Sunnis.

Al-Zarqawi’s family refuses to comment on these accusations or meet the press in their impoverished home in Zarqa, 25 km northeast of Amman, where visitors say foam mattresses are the only furniture.

“We have nothing to say,” one of his six sisters told AFP when contacted by telephone yesterday.

“We have no news of him. He has not been in touch with us by phone or mail for a long time,” she said, refusing to comment on the accusations against her brother.

“We can expect anything from infidels,” she added.

In addition to his sisters, Al-Zarqawi has two brothers who live at home with their mother, Umm Sayel, who keeps to her bed because of a heart condition.

Their father is dead, and the daughter told AFP that the mother is “heartbroken.”

In the September 2000 trial of 28 suspects accused of plotting attacks against Western targets in Jordan, Al-Zarqawi was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison.

In December 2002, Jordanian authorities accused him of recruiting a Jordanian and a Libyan to gun down US diplomat Laurence Foley, who was murdered outside his Amman home two months earlier.

At the time, a top official told AFP that the murder investigation carried out by Jordanian intelligence services in cooperation with their US counterparts said that Al-Zarqawi had been spotted in north Iraq.