Saif al-Adel Captured! (Or Not)

Yesterday, as I was preparing to board a plane to Boston for a book talk at MIT, I caught a glimpse of a BBC headline proclaiming that senior al-Qa'ida commander Saif al-Adel had been arrested after taking a plane from Pakistan back to his native Egypt.
I was unable to get to a computer for the rest of the day, and was surprised that I didn't see a headline about the capture of the terror network's former military commander in any of the bars I occupied while waiting for my flight delays to end.

Finally, this morning I was greeted by the news that the arrest may have been a case of mistaken identity, and that Egyptian authorities likely had arrested the wrong man.

Well, it did seem a little odd that al-Adel, a former Egyptian Army colonel with a $5 million bounty on his head, would be so foolish as to fly from Pakistan to Egypt under what U.S. officials believe to be his real name, Mohammed Ibrahim Makkawi. 

Saif al-Adel: Apparently, not a complete idiot after all.