Salem al-Hamadeen (Jihadi Militant, Egypt)

• Full name: Salem Selmi al-Hamadeen
• Pseudonym: Abu Anas al-Ansari
• Alternatives: N/a
• Location: Sinai
• Affiliation: Islamic State’s Province of Sinai, fmr Assembly of Monotheism and Jihad in the Sinai [JTJS]

Salem al-Hamadeen (°ca 1977) was a longtime Bedouin jihadi from the Sinai Peninsula. As a young man, he had cultivated marihuana and was once convicted for theft.¹ In the mid-2000s, Hamadeen joined the Assembly of Monotheism and Jihad in the Sinai [JTJS; Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad fi-Sina’a].² He allegedly helped prepare the devastating 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh bombings in which 88 people were killed.³ Hamadeen was eventually arrested and imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities.⁴

Hamadeen escaped from prison during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.⁵ Later that year, he helped found the Partisans of the Holy House [ABaM; Ansar Bait al-Maqdis].⁶ Hamadeen became responsible for training and weapons procurement.⁷ He also served as one of the ABaM’s commanders in the Sinai. [9] On Oct. 24, 2014, fighters under his command killed 28 soldiers during a multi-pronged attack on an army checkpoint in Kharouba.⁸ Earlier, Hamadeen was wrongly reported to have been killed by Bedouin tribesmen in May 2014.⁹

One the ABaM’s earliest supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh; Dawlat al-Islamiya fi-Iraq wal ash-Sham], Hamadeen helped expedite the group’s transformation into an official branch of the DaIISh in late 2014.¹⁰ He continued to act as the chief of armament and training in the newly formed Islamic State’s Province of Sinai [DaIWS; Dawlat al-Islamiya Wilayat Sina’a]. Hamadeen also remained deeply involved in the group’s operations against the security forces. He commanded the simultaneous attacks on more than a dozen security checkpoints in and around Sheikh Zuweid on Jul. 01, 2015. More than twenty soldiers were killed in the incidents.¹¹ At one point, DaIISh top leader Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) reportedly appointed Hamadeen as DaIWS chief Mohammed Ziada’s successor-in-waiting.¹²

Hamadeen was wrongly reported to have been eliminated in a strike by the Egyptian air force in the North Sinai governorate on Mar. 18, 2017.¹³ He was eventually killed when government-allied Bedouin militiamen intercepted his vehicle near the village of Barth on Mar. 21, 2021.¹⁴