Al-Qaeda leader Abdelhamid Abou Zeid confirmed dead in Mali Abou Zeid, 46, was considered one of AQIM's most radical leaders. In June 2009, his men kidnapped British tourist Edwin Dyer. According to multiple witnesses, Abou Zeid personally beheaded him. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had said after fierce fighting in the Ifoghas in late February that DNA tests would be carried out to determine whether Abou Zeid and Belmokhtar had in fact been killed. Mali descended into chaos in the wake of a March 2012 coup, as Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels capitalised on the power vacuum to seize a Texas-sized triangle of desert territory in the north. France launched its intervention in its former colony on January 11 to stop the Islamists from advancing on the capital, Bamako.