Posted on 03/19/2004 11:55:23 PM PST by Anti-Bubba182
CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) is the leader of al-Qaida, but Ayman al-Zawahri, who officials say is cornered in Pakistan, is thought to be largely responsible for turning the terror group into a feared international network.
Pakistani forces believe they have cornered and perhaps wounded the Egyptian-born al-Zawahri in a major battle near the Afghan border.
Al-Zawahri, bin Laden's deputy, is thought to have provided much of the ideology driving al-Qaida since his Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged with the network in 1998, experts say.
"He is bin Laden's brain," said Montasser el-Zayat, a prominent Egyptian attorney who defends Islamic radicals and spent three years in prison with al-Zawahri. "He's the planner, the organizer and the thinker who laid the ground for the idea of an Islamic front."
Catching bin Laden's alleged deputy would be a significant boost to the U.S. campaign against terrorism, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Thursday on PBS' "News Hour With Jim Lehrer."
"He'd be huge," Wolfowitz said. "I mean, he was the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was his major terrorist organization that merged with al-Qaida."
El-Zayat, who was jailed with al-Zawahri in 1981 for conspiracy to assassinate the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, said al-Qaida will survive even if the No. 2 leader is captured or killed.
Wolfowitz echoed that sentiment. "They are very decentralized operations ... so you've got to go after them one by one."
U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) also stressed that even if al-Zawahri were captured, it wouldn't end the terror.
"Obviously, if you can take out one of the most important leaders in al-Qaida, that's an important step, a really important step. But as we've said, al-Qaida is a network and you have to break up the network," Rice said. She added that two-thirds of al-Qaida's leadership had been captured or killed.
Born June 19, 1951, al-Zawahri grew up in a family of doctors and scholars. He began his militant career in 1966 at age 15, when he was arrested for belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood — the Arab world's oldest fundamentalist Muslim group, which advocates creation of an Islamic state in Egypt.
He was later freed and graduated from Cairo University's medical school, earning a master's degree in surgery four years later. He also wrote several books, including a critical assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Zawahri was indicted in the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, simultaneous attacks that killed 231 people and wounded more than 5,000. The U.S. government has a $25 million reward on his head.
Al-Zawahri combined his experience leading militant movements with bin Laden's money and charisma, a recipe that gave al-Qaida its international prominence in the Islamic world, el-Zayat said.
"He turned the front from being just one in conflict with the Egyptian government into something global," el-Zayat said of al-Zawahri 's mark on al-Qaida. "He laid the foundations and turned it into an international movement."
Since going into hiding, the former surgeon has appeared in videos with bin Laden, wearing a turban of Islamic clerics.
He also was heard on a tape aired on Arab satellite television stations. In the latest broadcasts on Feb. 24, he taunted President Bush (news - web sites) and threatened more attacks on the United States. He also criticized France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves in schools.
Al-Zawahri was sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt after the Jihad group claimed responsibility for the 1996 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Egyptian Islamic Jihad assassinated Sadat during a Cairo military parade in 1981.
El-Zayat said he finds it hard to believe that bin Laden's deputy would stay in one area near the Afghan border for so long. But if al-Zawahri is captured or killed, the attorney expects that his influence will continue.
If he is killed, "he will become a saint and a source of inspiration for the (Islamic) movements," el-Zayat said. "His thoughts ... have become a phenomenon."
Kill the brain....
Didn't we know this, like, years ago? Thank God for the AP.
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