The US has eliminated Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, over the weekend, US President Joe Biden has confirmed in an address to the nation. Calling the attack as a “precision strike”, the US President said it did not cause civilian casualties.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, 71, succeeded Osama Bin Laden as the leader of the Al Qaeda in 2011. He and Laden had planned the September 11 attack on the US. Since then, he has been one of the US’s most wanted terrorists.

Zawahiri was killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Afghan capital on Sunday. According to officials, two missiles were fired from a drone at Zawahiri when he was on the balcony of a safe house.

Although, other family members were also present at the scene, they were unharmed by the drone attack.

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Explained: Who was al-Zawahri — and why did US kill him?

His death would bring closure to families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the 9/11 attacks, Biden said.

Who was Zawahiri?

Zawahiri was born in Cairo, Egypt, on June 19, 1951, in a middle-class family of doctors and scholars.

His grandfather, Rabia al-Zawahiri, served as the grand imam of a centre of Sunni Islamic learning in the Middle East called the Al Azhar. One of Zawahiri’s uncles was the first secretary-general of the Arab League, BBC reported.

At an early age, Zawahiri became involved in political Islam. He was arrested for being a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which was one of the country’s oldest and largest Islamist organisation. At the time of his arrest, Zawahiri was 15 years old.

Zawahiri graduated in medicine from Cairo University in 1974 and four years later obtained a Master’s in surgery. His father, Mohammed, who was a pharmacology professor at the medical school of Cairo University, died in 1995.

Arrest in Egypt

Initially, Zawahiri set up his own clinic in a suburb of Cairo. However, he was soon attracted to radical Islamist groups which worked to overthrow the Egyptian government. He joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad after it was founded in 1973.

The world first came to hear of Zawahiri when he was arrested with several other members of the group in 1981 for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

“We have sacrificed and we are still ready for more sacrifices until the victory of Islam," Reuters quoted Zawahiri as saying from the courtroom cage. Zawahiri was sentenced to a three-year jail term for illegal possession of arms, but was acquitted of involvement in Sadat's assassination.

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In jail, the authorities regularly tortured Zawahiri, BBC quoted fellow Islamist prisoners as saying. This experience transformed him into a fanatic and violent extremist.

On being released from prison in 1985, Zawahiri went to Saudi Arabia. He then moved to Peshawar in Pakistan and later to Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, Zawahiri worked as a doctor but also established a faction of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. When the Egyptian Islamic Jihad re-emerged in 1993, Zawahiri became its leader. He is said to be instrumental in a series of attacks on Egyptian government ministers. During the mid-1990s, the group’s campaign led to the deaths of over 1,200 Egyptians.

Years with Bin Laden

Zawahiri is said to have lived in Bulgaria, Denmark and Switzerland. He also travelled to Iraq, Iran, Austria, Yemen, Balkans and the Philippines using a false passport.

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He was held in Chechnya by the Russians for six months in December 1996 for not having a valid visa.

In 1997, Zawahiri is said to have shifted base to the Afghan city of Jalalabad, closer to Osama Bin Laden. A year later, five radical Islamist militant groups, including Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, and Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad formed the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.

Zawahiri wrote in a 1998 manifesto that it was the individual duty of every Muslim to “kill Americans and their allies — civilian and military”, Washington Post reported.

Three years later, he planned the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Zawahiri’s satellite telephone conversations were used to prove that Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks.

After Bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri’s global influence weakened with the US killing most of his deputies in a succession of air strikes. In the last few years, he had become a remote and marginal figure, sending messages only occasionally.

(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)

First Published:Aug 2, 2022 2:07 PM IST