Ayman al-Zawahiri

Resumen

Designado líder de Al Qaida tras la muerte de OBL: Al-Qaeda says Egypt-born al-Zawahiri has succeeded bin Laden as leader of terror network (WaPo, June 16, 2011)  y Al Qaeda appoints Egyptian-born physician Zawahiri as leader (Mustapha Ajbaili, June 16, 2011):

“Continuaremos la yihad hasta que expulsemos a los invasores de las tierras musulmanas.”

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an eye surgeon who helped found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group, is expected to replace Osama Bin Laden as the leader of al-Qaeda.

He was already the group's chief ideologue and was believed by some experts to have been the "operational brains" behind the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

Zawahiri was number two - behind only Bin Laden - in the 22 "most wanted terrorists" list announced by the US government in 2001 and continues to have a $25m bounty on his head.Zawahiri was reportedly last seen in the eastern Afghan town of Khost in October 2001, and went into hiding after a US-led coalition overthrew the Taliban.He was thought to be hiding in the mountainous regions along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with the help of sympathetic local tribes. However, the killing of Bin Laden on 1 May 2011 in Abbottabad, north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, suggests this may not be the case. His wife and children were reportedly killed in a US air strike in late 2001.

Zawahiri was for a time al-Qaeda's most prominent spokesman, appearing in 40 videos and audiotapes since 2003 - most recently in April 2011 - as the group tried to radicalise and recruit Muslims worldwide.

He has also been indicted in the US for his role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa, and was sentenced to death in Egypt in absentia for his activities with Islamic Jihad during the 1990s.

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