Profiles

Ayman al-Zawahiri

If truly encircled by his enemies as reports emanating from Pakistan suggest, top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri may well be reviewing his tumultuous life.

The Egyptian's lifetime devotion to religious war has cost him his family, his wealth and perhaps now will also claim his future.

Surrounded by Pakistani troops on the border with Afghanistan, three-and-a-half-years after the September 11 attacks made him one of the most wanted men in the world, al-Zawahiri's pursuers would admit that he has made immense personal sacrifices for the cause he believed in.

Wedded to cause

Decades ago he gave up the affluent life of a Cairo doctor to dedicate himself to the Islamist underground, a choice that would eventually take him, like bin Ladin, to the mountains of Afghanistan.

In December 2001 his wife and several children were reported to have been blown to pieces by American bombing in Afghanistan, but the bespectacled al-Qaida leader managed to escape the US dragnet and went on the run.

Born in 1951, al-Zawahiri espoused his cause from an early age. In the 1960s he joined Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's oldest Islamist group.

He was tried, along with many others, for links to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He served a three-year jail term for illegal arms possession but was acquitted of the main charges.

Expanding work

In 1985, al-Zawahiri left Egypt for Pakistan, where he worked as a doctor treating fighters wounded in battles against Soviet forces occupying neighbouring Afghanistan.

He took over in 1993 the leadership of Jihad, Egypt's second largest Islamic armed group.

A military court in Egypt sentenced al-Zawahiri to death in absentia in 1999 for militant activities.

Al-Zawahiri joined forces with bin Ladin in 1998. He has been indicted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"Ayman is for bin Ladin like the brain to the body," a Cairo-based lawyer Montasser al-Zayat says.

In a 2003 audiotape, al-Zawahiri urged Muslims to strike at the embassies and commercial interests of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Norway and half a dozen Middle East states he called subjects of US and Israel.