A former French intelligence officer who defected to Al-Qaeda was among the targets of the first wave of U.S. air strikes in Syria last month, according to people familiar with the defector’s movements and identity.
According to an AP report from Istanbul, two European intelligence officials described the former French officer as the highest ranking defector ever to go over to the terrorist group and called his defection one of the most dangerous developments in the West’s long confrontation with Al-Qaeda.
The identity of the officer is a closely guarded secret.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that the assault on the Nusra Front locations was aimed at members of what the Obama administration has dubbed the Khorasan group, a unit of top-level terror operatives who had been dispatched to Syria to plot attacks on the West.
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