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Ayman al-Zawahiri

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Ayman al-Zawahiri

Ayman al-Zawahiri (Arabic: ايمن الظواهري) (born June 19, 1951) is a prominent member of the al-Qaeda group and formerly the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization. Al-Zawahiri is a physician by trade. He speaks Arabic, French, and some English.

He has used Abu Muhammad (Abu Mohammed), Abu Fatima, Muhammad Ibrahim, Abu Abdallah, Abu al-Mu'iz, The Doctor, The Teacher, Nur, Ustaz, Abu Mohammed Nur al-Deen, Abdel Muaz (Abdel Moez, Abdel Muez), and other names as aliases.

In 1998 he formally merged Egyptian Islamic Jihad into al-Qaeda. According to reports by a former al-Qaida member, he has worked in the al-Qaida organization since its inception and was a senior member of the group's shura council. He is often described as a "lieutenant" to the head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. It is also assumed that al-Zawahiri serves as bin Laden's doctor. Osama bin Laden reportedly suffers from a kidney disorder, possibly requiring dialysis [1].

History

Ayman al-Zawahiri was born to a prominent middle class family in Maadi, Egypt, a suburb of Cairo, and was reportedly a studious youth. His father was a pharmacologist. However, events pushed him in a more radical direction (possibly the Six Day War in 1967). By fourteen he had joined the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin), an Islamist group and became a student and follower of Sayyid Qutb. Al-Zawahiri studied behavior, psychology and pharmacology as part of his medical degree at Cairo University. By 1979 he had moved on to the much more radical Islamic Jihad, where he eventually became one of its leading organizers and recruiters. He was one of hundreds arrested following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, but the Egyptian government was unable to prove any connection between al-Zawahiri and the crime and he was released after serving jail time for illegal arms possession.

In the 1980s he journeyed to Afghanistan to participate in the mujahideen resistance against the Soviet Union's occupation. There he met Osama bin Laden, who was running a base for mujahideen called Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK); both of them worked under the tutelage of the Palestinian Abdullah Yusuf Azzam; later when the MAK fractured al-Zawahiri joined bin Laden in organizing the al-Qaeda group.

In 1990 al-Zawahiri returned to Egypt, where he continued to push Islamic Jihad in more radical directions employing knowledge and tactics learned in Afghanistan.

In 1996, he was considered the most credible threat and a highly lethal terrorist who could strike against the USA. A warning issued at the time specified suicide bombing as the likely form of attack. In late 1996 he was detained in Russia for six months by the FSB after he apparently tried to recruit jihadists in Chechnya. According to the FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko, "He had four passports, in four different names and nationalities. We checked him out in every country, but they could not confirm him. We could not keep him forever, so we took him to the Azerbaijani border and let him go." In 1997 he was held responsible for the massacre of 58 (or 67) foreign tourists in the Egyptian town of Luxor, for which he was sentenced to death in absentia in 1999 (see below).

On February 23, 1998, he issued a joint fatwa with Osama bin Laden under the title "World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders", an important step in broadening their conflicts to a global scale.

In 1999 al-Zawahiri was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian military tribunal for his role in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad insurgency, including the massacre of sixty-two civilian tourists in Luxor in 1997.

According to Vincent Cannistraro, former top CIA counterterrorist official, "Zawahiri is the guy-he's the operational commander...number one, on the right hand side of Osama."

On September 25, 2001, Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Dr. al-Zawahiri in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon.

Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri's whereabouts are unclear. It seems likely he stays with bin Laden in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. On December 3, 2001, airstrikes were launched on a complex of caves near Jalalabad. Zawahiri's wife, Azza, and their three children were reportedly killed in the attack.

Zawahiri was thought to have been killed by Pakistani mercenaries as he was riding in an ambulance after being wounded by an American bomb. The body was buried in a snowbank along with other Al Qaeda fighters. Canadian troops exhumed the remains in the spring, and the skull of the corpse was sent to a laboratory at F.B.I. headquarters. Tests compared the DNA of the skull with that of Mohammed al-Zawahiri. The results showed that the skull was not Zawahiri's.

In May of 2004, the Pakistani government had announced that he was surrounded in a tribal area of Pakistan bordering the Afghan mountains, along with 50-100 hardcore Al Qaeda fighters. Although there were significant casualties, no trace of him was discovered. It is now believed he was never in the area to begin with or slipped out of the dragnet just as the fighting commenced.

On January 13, 2006, the CIA launched an airstrike on Damadola, a Pakistani village near the Afghan border, where they believed al-Zawahiri was located. The airstrike killed eight men, five women and five children but it is not known whether Al-Zawahiri was among them. Pakistani officials claim only civilians were killed, although the US government mantains that there is no indications to whether he's alive or dead. The Pakistan government condemned the US attack and the loss of innocent life.[2]

Video messages

  • Early September of 2003 a video showing al-Zawahiri and bin Laden walking together, as well as an audiotape, was released to the al Jazeera network.
  • Another video was released at September 9, 2004, where he announced more assaults.
  • On August 4, 2005, he issued a televised statement blaming Tony Blair and his government's foreign policy for the July 2005 London bombings.
  • On September 1, 2005 al Jazeera broadcast a videomessage from Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of bombers of the London metro. His message was followed by another message from al-Zawahiri, blaming again Blair for the bombings.
  • On December 7, 2005 the full 40 minute interview from September was posted on the Internet with previously unseen video footage. See below for links.
  • January 6, 2006, Zawahiri said U.S. President Bush's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq meant Washington had been defeated in Iraq. Zawahiri was quoted as saying, "Bush, you must confess that you have been defeated in Iraq and in Afghanistan and you will be in Palestine soon." Zawahiri also conveyed his condolences to the people of Pakistan struck by the catastrophic 2005 Kashmir Earthquake.

Reward offered by the US

The U.S. Department of State is offering a reward of up to US$25 million for information leading directly to the apprehension or conviction of Ayman al-Zawahiri. He is wanted for his alleged role in the August 7, 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. He is still at-large.

See also

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