Ayman al-Zawahiri …. The international terrorism leader
Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was often referred to as Bin
Laden's right-hand man, took over the leadership of al-Qaeda following the
killing of Osama Bin Laden by US forces in 2011. There names listed sequentially
in the 22-names-list, which include the most important wanted terrorists to the
US, because of the events of 11 September.
He is considered one of the operational brains
behind the 11 September 2001 attacks; the US government in 2001 continues to
have a $25m bounty on his head.
Ayman Mohammed Rabee al-Zawahiri, born June 19,
1951, and grew up in Heliopolis and Maadi, two of the high class neighborhoods
in Cairo. He belongs to the middle-class; his family includes number of
scientific and scholars.
He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in 1974, to
work as a surgeon (specializing in general surgery) and later specialized in
eye surgery. He obtained a master's degree after 4 years of graduation.
Al-Zawahiri started up a clinic in a suburb of Cairo
and joined the Jihad group since its founding in 1973, to be arrested after 3
years on 23 October 1981, among those accused of assassination the President
Mohamed Anwar Sadat. In this time, he was an Amir of the organization and
supervisor of the intellectual and cultural guidance of the Jihad.
Although he was acquitted in this case, he was
convicted of the illegal possession of arms, and served a three-year sentence,
to release in 1985. He fled to Saudi Arabia and worked in one of its hospitals,
then left to Peshawar in Pakistan and later to Afghanistan.
He met Osama bin Laden to establish a faction of
Islamic Jihad Islamic whilst working as a doctor at the Kuwaiti Red Crescent
Hospital in Peshawar during the Soviet occupation.
After the fall of the Soviets, al-Zawahiri left for
Sudan in 1993 with Bin Laden and others. He returned after Taliban seized power
in the mid-1990s, exactly in 1996, it was as the Second immigration to
Afghanistan, he founded the international Jihad Movements, “World Islamic Front
for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders”, in 1998.
Zawahiri signed a fatwa, or religious edict,
belonged to the Front, permitting the killing of US civilians. Six months
later, two simultaneous attacks destroyed the US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, killing 223 people.
Al-Zawahiri divides his strategy into long-term and
close targets, such as attacking the interests of the Jews and Crusaders, aiming
the United States and its allies in the West. In the long-term, the overthrow
of regimes in the world, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the main aim to the Front.
For this matter, he also called to use Afghanistan,
Iraq and Somalia as training area to the militants, in contrast to the strategy
of «Da”esh» which aimed fighting the close enemy, Arab rulers.
No one knows exactly where the al Qaeda leader has
escaped since October 2001, hiding in mountainous areas along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border with the help of a number of sympathetic tribesmen.
He is believed to have lived in Bulgaria, Denmark and Switzerland, and
sometimes used a false passport to travel to the Balkans, Austria, Yemen, Iraq,
Iran and the Philippines.
Zawahiri survived a US missile attack supervised by
the CIA on January 13, 2006, killing 18 people who were accompanying him in the
region of Damadola, Pakistan.
Although he criticizes the Islamic groups that
embrace peace as a means of change, he praised the so-called "Arab
Spring" in his first video on June 27, 2011, following his leadership of al
Qaeda. He also praised the Syrian revolution in a speech entitled (East’s pride
begin from Damascus), in which he called for Jihad in Syria.
Zawahiri most prominent publications are: Knights
under the Prophet’s flag, the bitter harvest: the Muslim Brotherhood in sixty
years, and loyalty &disavowal (Al Wala' Wal Bara') Imparted Doctrine, &
Missed reality.