A “career” in Islamic terrorist organisations that lasted over 40 years that of Ayman Al Zawahiri, which ended with the attack of a CIA drone in Kabul.

Al Zawahiri, 71, was Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man and Al Qaeda’s number two when the 9/11 attacks, in which he is said to have played a central role, were conducted.

Egyptian, gold-certificated in medicine and a member of a prominent family, he was the grandson of Rabia Al Zawahiri, the prominent imam of Cairo’s Al Azhar University. He moved to the border with Afghanistan where he met Osama bin Laden.

He had joined Egyptian fundamentalist movements and was arrested for involvement in the attack on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

 After three years in prison he had left Egypt and moved to the border with Afghanistan where, as a doctor, he had joined the cause of the mujahadin treating the wounded in the war against the Soviet Union. Here he met Osama bin Laden and joined Al Qaeda by collaborating in the attacks on the US embassy in Kenya and Tanzania and in the attack of the US destroyer Cole in Yemen, until the September 11, 2001 attack planning.

 He had already escaped a first US attack on his refuge in Tora Bora 20 years ago in which his wife and some of his children died. After the US Navy Seals attack that led to the killing of bin Laden 11 years ago, Al Zawahiri took over the leadership of the terrorist organisation. He had a $25 million bounty on his head, and until the Western troops left he kept well away from Kabul where he met his death in the Sherpur residential neighbourhood.

– Tgcom24