Mahfouz Ould Al-Walid

Mahfouz Ould al-Walid (Arabic: محفوظ ولد الوليد), kunya Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar and poet previously associated with al-Qaeda. A veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, he ran a religious school called the Institute of Islamic Studies in Kandahar, Afghanistan from the late 1990s until the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Al-Walid was on the shura council of al-Qaeda and was the head of the sharia committee.

Along with Mustafa Hamid, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Saeed al-Masri and Saif al-Adel, al-Walid opposed the September 11 attacks two months prior to their execution. Under interrogation, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said that al-Walid had opposed any large-scale attack against the United States and wrote Bin Laden a stern letter warning against any such action, quoting the Quran.

Al-Walid fled from Afghanistan to Iran after the American invasion and was held there under house arrest from 2002 until April 2012. At that time, Iran extradited him to Mauritania, where he was held in prison until his release on July 7, 2012. He was released after renouncing his ties to al-Qaeda and condemning the September 11 attacks.