Ayman Zawahiri: Bio of al-Qaida's #2

July 13, 2002

Trained as a surgeon, born in Egypt in 1951, Ayman al-Zawahiri, came from a  family of doctors and scholars. Zawahiri joined militant Islamic cells as a boy. He has worked from an early age with all the Islamic groups in Egypt starting with the Muslim Brotherhood. He was already involved in Egypt's radical Muslim community when he was arrested at the age of 15 for being a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood - the Arab world's oldest fundamentalist group.

He graduated from Cairo University's medical school in 1974 and obtained a degree in surgery four years later.

In 1981, Egyptian Islamic Jihad assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel. Zawahiri was tried along with other radical Islamists for their part in the assassination. He was convicted and served a three-year sentence for illegal possession of arms. After his release, he left for Saudi Arabia, then Peshawar near the Khyber Pass in the North-West Frontier District, Pakistan, and later to neighboring Afghanistan, where he established a faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group.

In the early 1990's he led an itinerant path though western Europe. Zawahiri is known to have lived in Denmark and Switzerland.

Zawahiri led the Vanguards of Conquest group that was responsible for the Luxor massacre in Egypt, November, 1997. In that attack, 60 tourists were systematically murdered and some mutilated by gunman who themselves were killed. The attacks were against tourism in Egypt as well as to secure the release of the group's spiritual leader, Omar Abdel Rahman who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.

Most of the victims were from Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Britain, Bulgaria, Colombia and France. Authorities were still trying to identify some of the victims, and hospital sources said there were signs that the attackers had mutilated some of those killed .

"They shot everyone in the arms and legs. Then they killed everyone who was still alive with a shot to the head," said one victim, who said she survived because she was covered by the bodies of two tourists killed when her group was attacked. (CNN)


Zawahiri was sentenced to death in absentia by an  Egyptian court along with nine other terrorists.

In Afghanistan, Zawahiri merged the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group and Bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Both had been initially fighting to overthrow their respective home governments (Egypt and Saudi Arabia). After several failures, they together forged a new international cause to rid the middle east of US protection and influence first, and then move on toward overthrowing the non-Islamist governments of the Middle East and forming a pan - Arabic, monolithic, fundamentalist Islamic nation.

Zawahiri appeared in a video alongside Bin Laden threatening retaliation against the United States for the arrest of the Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Then, in 1998, he was the second of five signatories, after Bin Laden, to Bin Laden's 1998 "fatwa" calling for attacks against US civilians. Again, in 1998, he was integral to the planning and execution of the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania .

Zawahiri  has been named by Israeli intelligence as the "operational brains" behind the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In early December, 2001, his wife and children were reported killed in the Tora Bora area during the US invasion of Afghanistan. Zawahiri himself has  been reported as having been injured or killed, but militants in London and al-Qaida spokesmen on al-Jazeera TV say he is unhurt and still at large.

On April 15, 2002, an undated videotape of Zawahiri was released on  Al-Jazeera. In it he said of the 911 attack on America:

This great victory, which was achieved, is due, in fact, to the grace of Allah alone. It was not due to our skillfulness or superiority, but it is due to Allah's blessing alone.

Allah Almighty grants His mercy to whoever He wants. Allah looks into the hearts of His slaves and chooses from them those who are qualified to win His grace, mercy and blessings.

Those 19 brothers, who left [their homes], made efforts and offered their lives for Allah's cause - Allah has favored them with this conquest, which we are enjoying now.

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