Al-Qaeda accuses Pakistan of detaining wife of its chief Zawahiri

Shaimaa Hefzy

Al-Qaeda has accused Pakistani security forces of detaining the wife of its chief, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and two other families of the insurgent group’s “martyrs” for nearly a year.

In a statement, the leadership of Al-Qaeda has alleged “treacherous Pakistani forces” captured Zawahiri’s wife and others as they left the former Taliban stronghold of Waziristan bordering Afghanistan about a year ago due to continuous airstrikes.

Zawahiri, an Egyptian, became leader of Al-Qaeda following the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan by US Navy SEALS. He is believed to be hiding somewhere in the region.

The terrorist organization did not specify which one of Zawahri’s four wives got kidnapped, however, the most known is Omaimia Hassan, who herself released a number of statements.

The statement also added “We … hold Pakistan’s government and its treacherous army and their American masters responsible for their criminal acts.”

But Al-Qaeda’s announcement that Zawahri’s wife has been held for more than a year, crosses with the publication of an article in April by Hassan, in which she slammed the United States.

Omaima was married to Tariq Anwar, commander of special operations in the Egyptian Jihad, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2001 in the Khost region, and later married Zawahiri.

She is the sister of Osama Hassan, a former leader of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya who got into prison in Iran and later killed in Afghanistan. His daughter, Ruqaya, is the wife of Jaafar bin Mohamed al- Islambouli, the brother of late President Sadat’s killer Khaled El-Islambouli.

Her other brother, Sharif Hassan, was a member of the Jama’a al-Islamiyya who who was sentenced to death in the case of “returnees from Afghanistan” in 1992.

After 2011, Omaima appeared when she sent a congratulatory message published in the French newspaper Le Figaro, citing an Islamic website, saying she addressed this message to Muslim women because of their active and key role in the Arab Spring revolutions, the beginning of the Islamic Spring in the world, according to the letter.

“I congratulate all females of the world for these blessed revolutions and I salute every mother who sacrificed her loved ones in the revolutions. It is really an Arab Spring and will soon become an Islamic Spring,” read the message.

His first wife, Azza Nowera, married Zawahiri in 1979 in Egypt.

According to al-Qaeda officials, she was killed in a US air raid over a neighborhood in the suburb of Kandahar, where she was staying nine families, including women and children.