Yusef al-Ayeri

Al-Ayeri was killed in 2003 in a gun-battle with Saudi security forces as part of the crackdown on Islamic insurgency in Saudi Arabia. He was 29 years old at the time of his death.

The scholar of Islamism Roel Meijer says that "what immediately strikes the reader of the works of Ayiri is their scope, depth, and length" as "between 1998, when he was released from prison until his death, prison until his death, he managed to publish hundreds of pages" on different topics.

After the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, Ayeri was arrested by Saudi authorities and tortured. After two years he was released and was tasked by Bin Laden with organizing Al Qaeda's branch within Saudi Arabia.

The leader of the Somali militant Islamist group Al-Shabaab, Moktar Ali Zubeyr, has said that Saif al-Adel and Yusef al-Ayeri played an important role in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu by providing training and participating in the battle directly.

Yusuf al-Ayeri (Arabic: يوسف العييري ‎) or Yusuf bin Salih bin Fahd al-Ayeri (1974 – 2003; known by a number of aliases, including al-Battar—the Arabic name of one of the swords of Muhammad—conventionally rendered "Swift Sword" in English) was a Saudi Arabian member of Al-Qaeda, and the first-ever leader of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.

Born on 24 April 1974 in Dammam, Saudi Arabia to an upper-middle-class family, Ayeri was known for taking part in illegal street racing, before dropping out of secondary school at age 18 and travelling to Afghanistan, where he received paramilitary training in the Al Farouq training camp, eventually becoming a trainer at the camp. Ayeri briefly served as a bodyguard of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, with whom he traveled to Sudan.