Al-Qaeda’s Yemen leader appears in video after UN arrest report

The leader of al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen appears to be still at large despite a United Nations report which claimed he had been under arrest for months, the SITE Intelligence Group and two local tribal leaders said yesterday after he was seen in a video released by the jihadist group. Khalid Batarfi, who has been the leader of Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for about a year, talks about the storming of the US Congress last month in the video, which came out Wednesday. In the 20-minute video titled "America and the Painful Seizure", Batarfi says "storming the Congress is only the tip of the iceberg of what will come to them, God willing". A report filed to the UN Security Council last week claimed Batarfi was arrested and his deputy, Saad Atef al-Awlaqi, killed during an "operation in Ghayda City, Al-Mahrah governorate, in October".