Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda who was announced dead by U.S. President Joe Biden following an American airstrike in Kabul last Saturday, is one of the most prominent figures in international terrorism over the past decades. The Egyptian-born surgeon was a key founder of al-Qaeda and was responsible for several attacks in Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe. After the September 11 attacks, the U.S. State Department offered a reward of $25 million for intelligence leading to his capture.
Al-Zawahiri hailed from a middle-class Egyptian family with a strong reputation in various fields; his father, Muhammad Rabie al-Zawahiri, was a prominent physician and a professor at Cairo University. Additionally, one of his grandfathers, Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad al-Zawahiri, served as the 34th Grand Imam of Al-Azhar. His mother, Omayma Azzam, came from a politically active family and was the daughter of Abd al-Wahab Azzam, who served as the President of Cairo University, while her brother, Azzam Pasha, was the first Secretary-General of the Arab League (1945-1952).
Ayman al-Zawahiri was born in 1951 in Cairo, has a twin sister named Hiba Muhammad al-Zawahiri, and a younger brother named Muhammad al-Zawahiri. His sister is a professor of oncology at the National Cancer Institute at Cairo University. His brother worked for the "International Islamic Relief Organization" in Bosnia, Croatia, and Albania, and was arrested in 2000 in the UAE, then handed over to Egypt where he was sentenced to death for working with the "Jihad" group, which planned and executed several terrorist operations. However, after the 2011 revolution that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak, al-Zawahiri was released only to be re-arrested in August 2013 following the overthrow of the "Muslim Brotherhood" government.
According to available information about al-Zawahiri’s childhood and youth, he was described as "calm," diligent in his studies, and fond of reading and poetry. He studied medicine at Cairo University, graduating in 1974 with a very good degree, and later obtained a master's degree in surgery.
Admiring the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, al-Zawahiri joined the "Muslim Brotherhood" during his teenage years. After Qutb was executed in 1966, al-Zawahiri helped form a secret cell with four students aimed at overthrowing the regime and "establishing an Islamic state." This cell became the nucleus of the "Jihad" organization, which would be involved in dozens of terrorist operations in Egypt.
In 1981, al-Zawahiri was one of the hundreds arrested following the assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. According to his lawyer, Montasser al-Zayat, he was tortured in Egyptian prisons and was also linked to a suicide bombing attempt on Interior Minister Hassan al-Alfi. He also planned an assassination attempt on late Prime Minister Atef Sedki.
Al-Zawahiri traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1985 to work as a doctor in Jeddah. With the beginnings of al-Qaeda's establishment, he became the personal adviser to the organization’s leader, Osama bin Laden, whom he first met in Jeddah in 1986. In 1993, al-Zawahiri traveled to the United States, where he delivered many speeches in mosques in California under the alias "Abdul-Mu’izz."
He planned an attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, in 1995. In 1998, his name was included in an indictment in the U.S. for his role in the bombings of the American embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, prompting him to flee with bin Laden from Kabul to the Tora Bora mountains.
In 2001, al-Zawahiri's name appeared on the U.S. list of the 22 most wanted terrorists by the FBI during the presidency of George W. Bush. He was also mentioned among those involved in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
Al-Zawahiri had four wives; his first wife, Azzah, bore him four daughters and a son (Fatima, Omayma, Nabila, Khadija, Muhammad, and Aisha). Azzah, Muhammad, and Aisha were killed in an American airstrike in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks. The organization's prominence declined after bin Laden's death in 2011 in an American raid, further exacerbated by the emergence of ISIS, which competed for recruitment and outreach with a more violent rhetoric.
