The Al-Qaeda terrorist organization has released a 35-minute video narrated by its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was reportedly killed on July 31, 2022, in a CIA drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. The most recent recording is undated and the transcript did not indicate a time frame when it may have been taken. Ayman al-Zawahiri had been in hiding for years and the operation to find and kill him was the result of “careful, patient and persistent” work by the counterterrorism and intelligence community, a senior US administration official was quoted as saying.
Al Qaeda has not named a successor. But Saif al-Adel, a mysterious, low-profile former Egyptian special forces officer who is a high-ranking member of al-Qaida, is widely seen as the leading contender. The United States is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Saif al-Adel.
Who was Ayman al-Zawahiri?
Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri has been al-Qaeda’s second emir since June 2011, a month after its founder Osama bin Laden was killed by US special operations forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A surgeon by qualification during the Soviet-Afghan War, he and Osama bin Laden co-founded the Maktab-al-Khidmat (Afghan Services Bureau) in 1984 to recruit jihadists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
In 1988, al-Zawahiri emerged as one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted lieutenants as a founding member of al-Qaeda. Ayman al-Zawahiri was one of hundreds arrested for plotting the assassination of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad in 1995 was carried out by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, with al-Zawahiri at the top.
The UN Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee imposed international sanctions on him in 1999. After the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001, al-Zawahiri appeared on the list of 22 most wanted terrorists of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, published by US President George W. Bush. Ayman al-Zawahiri is survived by his third wife, Umaima Hassan, and seven children.
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