-Caveat Lector- <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/24/international/24AIDE.html> September 24, 2001 HEIR APPARENT Egyptian Doctor Believed to Be bin Laden's No. 2 By DOUGLAS JEHL CAIRO, Sept. 23 ó Among top lieutenants to Osama bin Laden, several are Egyptians, including a surgeon from Cairo who ranks second in the hierarchy of the Al Qaeda organization and is seen by some intelligence experts as Mr. bin Laden's most likely successor. The man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, 50, was the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the terrorist group blamed for the 1981 assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat. He joined in an alliance with Mr. bin Laden's group in 1998. After the American cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan that year, Dr. Zawahiri telephoned a Pakistani reporter on Mr. bin Laden's behalf and warned: "The war has started. The Americans should wait for the answer." Mr. bin Laden, a Saudi exile, has brought vast sums of family money to the Al Qaeda cause, and has proven an extraordinarily charismatic figure to his followers. But experts in Cairo describe Dr. Zawahiri as having delivered to the organization the complementary and equally essential skills of a shrewd intelligence and years of expertise. "Al-Zawahiri's experience is much broader than even bin Laden's," said Dia'a Rashwan, one of Egypt's top experts on militants. "His name has come up in nearly every case involving Muslim extremists since the 1970's." Dr. Zawahiri has not been seen in Egypt since 1986, when he packed up his office in the middle-class suburb of Maadi and departed for Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan and ultimately for Afghanistan, where he is believed to share quarters with Mr. bin Laden. His emergence as Mr. bin Laden's apparent deputy has raised his profile in Egypt, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, with his career seen as a particularly alarming example of how what began as homegrown grievances have metastasized into a fury of global dimensions. Since 1999, Dr. Zawahiri has been listed as one of Egypt's most-wanted men, after authorities gave credence to claims that he had been responsible for the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan and other acts of violence. He was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian court that year for activities linked to Jihad. In 1999, too, he was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York for his alleged role in the 1998 bombing of two American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the actions that prompted the cruise missile attacks and , until this month, had stood as the Al Qaeda group's most appalling actions. But in his rare public statements, Dr. Zawahiri has remained extraordinarily defiant. "Tell the Americans that we are not afraid of the bombardment, threats and acts of aggression," he told the Pakistani reporter in 1998. "We suffered and survived Soviet bombings for 10 years in Afghanistan, and we are ready for more sacrifices." Dr. Zawahiri is now the most senior among several hundred Egyptians thought to be working under Mr. bin Laden's leadership in Afghanistan, as part of the February 1998 pact in which he enlisted his own faction of Jihad with Mr. bin Laden's group and other organizations in what they called The Islamic Front for Fighting Crusaders and Jews. Among other Egyptians believed to be part of that front are Sobhi al- Sitta, also known by the alias Abu Hafas al-Masri, who heads what is known as the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Sites, which claimed responsibility for the 1998 American embassy bombings. In January of this year, one of Mr. Sitta's daughters married a son of Mr. bin Laden, according to television footage of the wedding broadcast on an Arab satellite station. Dr. Zawahiri was said to be among the guests. Dr. Zawahiri has been a fixture among Egypt's Islamic extremists since 1966, when, at the age of 15, he was arrested and later freed for his membership in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's oldest fundamentalist Muslim group. He hails from a prosperous and prestigious family that gives him a pedigree grounded firmly in both religion and politics. In 1974, he graduated from Cairo University's medical school and obtained a master's degree in surgery four years later. His father, who died in 1995, was a pharmacology professor at the same university. His grandfather, Rabia'a al-Zawahiri, was the grand imam of Cairo's Al Azhar, the mainstream center of Muslim learning, and his great uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary general of the Arab League. Egyptians who know him describe him as a smart but cautious man with an extraordinary dedication to extremist causes. "He believes that attention brings trouble," said Montasser al-Zayat, a lawyer for Egypt's Islamic Group, a rival faction once closely aligned with Jihad. Mr. Zayat, who spent three years in prison with Dr. Zawahiri after Mr. Sadat's assassination, added of the Jihad leader: "He believes that the best way to talk is through his operations." Dr. Zawahiri had assumed the helm of the Jihad group by the late 1970's, succeeding Ismael Tantawi, who left the country for Germany. In the security dragnet conducted after Mr. Sadat's assassination in 1981, Dr. Zawahiri was one of hundreds of extremists who were arrested, and he acknowledged in an interrogation at the time that Jihad's mission was to undertake a coup. But the authorities could never link Dr. Zawahiri to any direct role in the assassination, and he was released from prison in 1984. He had traveled earlier to Afghanistan to help care for the wounded among mujahedin fighters battling Soviet troops. After he decided to leave Egypt for good, he returned to that region, first to set up a camp in Pakistan to receive Egyptian volunteers heading to Afghanistan to join in the anti- Soviet fight. Officials of Egypt's Ministry of the Interior continue to describe Dr. Zawahiri as the leader of Jihad's military wing, which is blamed for a number of attacks in the 1990's, including the killing of dozens of foreign tourists in 1997 at a Pharaonical site in the southern city of Luxor. Asked in 1993 when he might return to Egypt, Dr. Zawahiri told the London-based newspaper Al Hayat: "I will be back as a conqueror only, and I do not accept being back in return for giving up my ideas of Jihad." ================================================================ Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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