PROFILE: Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri - al-Qaeda's new chief

Jun 16, 2011, 12:04 GMT

Cairo - Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man named by al-Qaeda as Osama bin Laden's successor after years as second-in-command, is often described as the terrorist network's ideologue-in-chief.

Al-Zawahiri, 59, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, but his exact whereabouts remain unknown.

For the past few years, he has been al-Qaeda's main spokesman, issuing dozens of audio and video statements since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as US troops were hunting down bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In a three-page communique published on an Islamist website Thursday, al-Qaeda said its 'general command' had nominated al-Zawahiri to succeed bin Laden, who was killed in a US military operation in Pakistan on May 2.

'Bin Laden was al-Qaeda's only commander in its 22-year history, and was largely responsible for the organization's mystique, its attraction among violent jihadists, and its focus on America as a terrorist target,' a senior US official said after bin Laden's death.

Al-Zawahiri 'is far less charismatic and not as well respected within the organization, according to comments from several captured al-Qaeda leaders,' he said.

An eye surgeon by training, al-Zawahiri was born on June 19, 1951, into a middle class family of doctors and academics from the northern Egyptian governorate of al-Beheira, and became politically active at a young age.

He joined the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's oldest Islamist organization, as a teenager and later the more radical Egyptian arm of Islamic Jihad. The latter is believed to be behind the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat.

Al-Zawahiri was one of hundreds of militants arrested over the killing of Sadat, which was triggered by the president's signing of a peace deal with Israel. He spent three years in prison on charges of weapons possession - an experience that is said to have radicalized him.

After his release in 1985 he left for Saudi Arabia and from there travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he served as a doctor during the Soviet occupation and recruited young people into jihad.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, the United States secretly aided opponents of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, including the Taliban and its sympathizers, among them al-Zawahiri and bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri then switched his attention back to Egypt in the mid-1990s, where Islamic Jihad led a campaign to topple the government and install an Islamic state. While their attempts failed, the group was blamed for the deaths of scores of Egyptians and also for an attack on tourists in Luxor in 1997.

For his role in the campaign, al-Zawahiri was tried in absentia and sentenced to death by an Egyptian court.

In 1998, he merged forces with bin Laden's al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups calling for jihad against 'Jews and Crusaders.'

Al-Zawahiri is believed to have exerted considerable influence over al-Qaeda strategy, convincing bin Laden to broaden his sights beyond ending the US military presence in bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia to global jihad, or holy war.

In 1998, al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 223 people. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were indicted for the attack in the US.

In 2001, al-Zawahiri was named number two after bin Laden on Washington's most-wanted list, with a 25-million-dollar reward offered for information leading to his arrest.

He is believed to have survived at least one attempt on his life by the US since then.

Nearly a month after bin Laden's death, he warned that the United States would regret killing bin Laden.

'Now you rejoice over the martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin Laden, the holy warrior, but also you will regret it,' he said in a nearly 30-minute video.

He also said that Muslims in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria share the same struggles against the United States, and urged Pakistan's youth to follow those in Arab nations in seeking to overthrow their government.