Al-Qaeda casting doubt on Zawahiri's killing with new recording

Instead of naming a new leader, the terrorist al-Qaeda organization aired an audio of its former leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed by the US in a raid in Afghanistan in August 2022.

According to Site, a website specialised in the news of terrorist movements, al-Qaeda published an undated, 35-minute audio recording of al-Zawahiri.

The recording, it said, raised controversy about the possibility that al-Zawahiri might be alive.

Al-Qaeda did not, however, comment on this controversy.

The US claims to have killed al-Zawahiri, almost four months ago.

Nonetheless, al-Qaeda has not named a successor yet. Observers consider this to be due to the failure and internal fragmentation of the organization.

They believe that Seif al-Adl, a former Egyptian officer, is closest to the saddle of al-Qaeda, being the second-in-command inside the organization after al-Zawahiri.

So the US announced, meanwhile, a reward of $10 million to whoever would provide information about the whereabouts of al-Adl.

Painful blow

Al-Zawahiri's killing constituted the biggest blow to al-Qaeda since the 2011 killing of the organization's founder Osama bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri tried to hide from the US, but apparently fell down at the end, in a move described by counterterrorism and intelligence agencies as 'accurate', 'diligent' and 'persistent'.

Commenting on the latest audio recording of al-Zawahiri, Amr Abdel Monem, a specialist in the affairs of terrorist groups, said in the recording the al-Qaeda leader speaks about three of the leaders of his organization who were killed almost seven years ago.

These leaders, he said, are Qari Imran, the former head of the organization in Afghanistan, Abu Khalid, the prominent leader of the organization, and Ahmed Farouk, the deputy emir of al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent.

He said al-Qaeda deliberately wrote "may Allah protect him" next to the name of al-Zawahiri and ignored his death.

Abdel Monem also referred to al-Zawahiri's criticism of ISIS in the last part of the recording.

He also referred to the use by the al-Qaeda leader of terms, such as 'Kharijites' and 'fitna al-Kharijites'.

"This pattern is out-dated in relations between the two organizations," Abdel Monem wrote on Facebook.

He noted that al-Qaeda just wanted to respond to ISIS.