(CNN) — Here’s a glimpse into the life of the killed leader of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Personal information:
Date of Birth: June 19, 1951
Place of birth: Egypt
Birth name: Ayman Muhammad Rabi al-Zawahiri
Padre: Rabie al-Zawahiri, professor of pharmacology
Madre: Umayma al-Zawahiri
Marriages: unknown in public records
Sons: unknown in public records
Studies: Cairo University, 1974, MS in Surgery, 1978
Other data
Zawahiri was Osama bin Laden’s personal physician.
Zawahiri came from a distinguished egyptian familyaccording to the newspaper The New York Times. His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahiri, was an imam of the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. His great-uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary of the Arab League.
The US State Department offered a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to Zawahiri’s capture.
And united nations report June 2021 suggested he was somewhere in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and might be too weak to be the face of propaganda.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is killed in Afghanistan.
Chronology
- 1970s: Zawahiri and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad are working to overthrow Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and establish an Islamic State.
- 1980s: he joins the mujahideen fighting the Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan.
- 1981: Zawahiri is among hundreds of suspects detained following Sadat’s assassination. He is not charged in connection with the murder, but he is sentenced to three years in prison for weapons possession.
- 1987: Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden know each other.
- August 6, 1998: a fax from Zawahiri’s group is sent to an Egyptian newspaper declaring that Egyptian Islamic Jihad is seeking revenge on the United States for the arrest of several of its members.
- August 7, 1998: a group of suicide bombers attack the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
- 1998: the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led by Zawahiri, and al Qaeda merge. Zawahiri and Bin Laden issue a fatwa or fatwa (Islamic law), published in an Arab newspaper, declaring that Muslims must kill Americans everywhere.
- 1999: Zawahiri is accused of the 1998 bombings once morest the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Receive a death sentencein the absence, of an Egyptian court, for an alleged plot once morest US interests in Albania.
- December 2001: Zawahiri’s wife and three of their children are killed in a US attack on the family’s residence in Afghanistan.
- June 8, 2011: a video of Zawahiri is published praising the Bin Laden.
June 2011: A US counterterrorism official tells CNN that he believes Zawahiri is al Qaeda’s new leader. - October 2012: Zawahiri praises the kidnapping of Warren Weinstein, a US citizen in Pakistan in a video posted on jihadi websites. Weinstein, a development expert, was kidnapped in 2011 from his home in Lahore, Pakistan. Zawahiri urges his followers to kidnap more Westerners.
- April 2014: they publish the audio of a two-part interview purportedly with Zawahiri on a radical Islamist website.
- August 2015: A person claiming to be Zawahiri claims in an audio recording that al Qaeda is aligned with the Taliban’s new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.
- September 2015: Zawahiri post audio messages in which he suggests that al Qaeda and ISIS should be unified, although he declares that the caliphate established by the Islamic State is not legitimate.
- May 2016: a man claiming to be Zawahiri pledge allegiance to new Taliban leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, in a recently released audio statement. “As emir of the al Qaeda jihadist group, I present our allegiance to you,” says a man’s voice, which appears to be Zawahiri’s.
- May 13, 2018: in response to US President Donald Trump’s move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Zawahiri calls in a video message to the resistance of the Palestinians and to a jihad once morest the United States.
- February 5, 2019: Zawahiri’s speech “The Way of Salvation” is published. In the video, Zawahiri urge your supporters to unite once morest enemies, including the Shia Muslims, the Americans, the Russians, the French and the Chinese.
- April 5, 2022: In a rare video message, Zawahiri praises an Indian Muslim student mocked by a crowd for wearing a hijab in Karnataka, India.
- August 1, 2022: USA announces who carried out an anti-terrorist operation once morest a major al Qaeda target in Afghanistan, where he is presumed to have been killed.
