Al-Faruq was born in Iraq. It is believed he joined al-Qaeda in the early 1990s and trained in Afghanistan, where he became one of Osama Bin Laden's key lieutenants. U.S. authorities believed al-Faruq was planning bomb attacks on American embassies when he was captured in Bogor, Indonesia in 2002 by an Indonesian security agent who handed him over to the United States.[1] The[2] Al-Faruq's capture was based on information derived from the capture of Abu Zubaydah.[3] Al-Faruq in turn revealed information about a plot to bomb embassies in Southeast Asia, giving rise to the "yellow alert" of 10 September 2002.[2]