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.