Who was Ayman al-Zawahri killed in US drone strike on Afghanistan
India Today
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan on Monday.
A US drone strike in Afghanistan this weekend killed Ayman al-Zawahri, who helped Osama bin Laden plot the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and ensured al-Qaida survived and spread in the years after. President Joe Biden on Monday announced the killing of al-Zawahri, delivering a significant counterterrorism win just 11 months after American troops left the country.
A look at the al-Qaida leader, who evaded US capture for 21 years after the suicide airliner attacks that in many ways changed America and its relations with the rest of the world.
Americans who lived through the 9/11 attacks may not remember al-Zawahri’s name, but many know his face more than two decades on: a man in glasses, slightly smiling, invariably shown in photos by the side of bin Laden as the two arranged the strike on the United States.
An Egyptian, al-Zawahri was born June 19, 1951, to a comfortable family in a leafy, drowsy Cairo suburb. Religiously observant from boyhood, he immersed himself in a violent branch of a Sunni Islamic revival that sought to replace the governments of Egypt and other Arab nations with a harsh interpretation of Islamic rule.
Al-Zawahri worked as an eye surgeon as a young adult, but also roamed Central Asia and the Middle East, witnessing Afghans’ war against Soviet occupiers in that country, and meeting young Saudi Osama bin Laden and other Arab militants rallying to help Afghanistan expel Soviet troops.
He was one of hundreds of militants captured and tortured in Egyptian prison after Islamic fundamentalists’ assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Biographers say the experience further radicalized him. Seven years later, al-Zawahiri was present when bin Laden founded al-Qaida.
Al-Zawahri merged his own Egyptian militant group was al-Qaida. He brought al-Qaida the organizational skill and experience — honed underground in Egypt, evading Egyptian intelligence — that allowed al-Qaida to organize cells of followers and strike around the world.
