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CNN Saturday Morning News
A Look at Osama bin Laden's Right-Hand Man
Aired September 29, 2001 - 10:19 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: With a $25 million price tag on his head, Osama bin Laden may be public enemy number one. But who is number two? A key bin Laden aide with a terrorist pedigree stretching all the way back to the early 1980s.
More now from CNN's Mike Boettcher.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If Osama bin Laden is now America's public enemy number one, Ayman al Zawahiri may now be public enemy number two.
PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM EXPERT: Ayman al Zawahiri is effectively bin Laden's number two. He is his closest adviser, has worked with bin Laden for a long. They have known each other since 1987.
BOETTCHER: Ayman al Zawahiri, the man who has bin Laden's ear, is already wanted by the United States, like bin Laden, for his alleged role in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Believed, at least until recently, to be in Afghanistan, al Zawahiri is also wanted in his native Egypt. Even before he met bin Laden in Pakistan in 1987, al Zawahiri led what the U.S. and Egypt said was a terrorist group. Now a 50-year-old surgeon, al Zawahiri was a medical student from a well-to-do family in Cairo when he was first arrested and charged with being part of a Muslim brotherhood plot to overthrow then president Nasser.
When Anwar Sadat took over as Egypt's president, al Zawahiri worked to overthrow him and establish an Islamic state, says Dia'a Rashwan.
DIA'A RASHWAN: Zawahiri, from the beginning, was with the idea of an internal Jihad against the Egyptian regime, which considered by him non-Muslim.
BOETTCHER: After Sadat moved from war with Israel to peace, members of Zawahiri's group, Islamic Jihad, assassinated the Egyptian president. In the wake of that assassination, Zawahiri was put on trial in 1981 as defendant number 113, accused of being part of the broader conspiracy against the Egyptian state.
This videotape of Zawahiri and some of his co-defendants was recorded during that trial.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is our word by Dr. Ayman Zawahiri.
BOETTCHER: Al Zawahiri emerged as the group's spokesman, and he outlined its goals.
AYMAN AL ZAWAHIRI: We want to speak the whole world. Who are we? Who are we? Why did they bring us here? And what we want to say about the first question: we are Muslims. We are Muslims who believe in that religion in its broad meaning. As more than ideology and practice. We believe in our religion, both as an ideology and practice, and hence we tried our best to establish this Islamic state and Islamic society.
BOETTCHER: Zawahiri would not condemn Sadat's assassination, instead attacked him for signing the Camp David peace accords. He also claimed Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, was trying to kill off Islamic Jihad and other groups.
AL ZAWAHIRI: Secondly, to complete the conspiracy of evacuating these areas in reparation for the Zionist infiltration. This high tech tactical conspiracy, which was declared by the stupid agent, Anwar Sadat.
BOETTCHER: Al Zawahiri complained that he and many others were being tortured while in jail.
AL ZAWAHIRI: They kicked us. They beat us. They worked us with electric cables. They shocked us with electricity. They shocked us with electricity. And, they used their wild dogs and they used their wild dogs. And they hanged us over the edges of the dogs with our hands tied at the back.
There, they arrested the wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the sons, in a trial to put psychological pressure over these innocent prisoners.
BOETTCHER: Al Zawahiri was convicted for his role in the conspiracy, and served three years in prison.
He surfaced in 1987, in Peshawar, Pakistan, doctoring to those wounded in the fight against Afghanistan's Soviet-backed regime. That's where he first met Osama bin Laden, who was leading a group of Muslims from around the world in the fight against the Soviets.
Little is known about al Zawahiri's activities for the next few years, but under his leadership, Islamic Jihad continued a violent campaign against the Egyptian government, blowing up its embassy in Pakistan in 1995 and trying to assassinate several leading Egyptian politicians.
This man, Ali Mohamed, a fellow Egyptian and member of Islamic Jihad living in the U.S., testified al Zawahiri actually visited the U.S. twice on fund-raising trips in the early 1990s.
Al Zawahiri and bin Laden grew closer, combining bin Laden's experience in the Afghan war with al Zawahiri's vision of an apocalyptic conflict between Islam and the West.
RASHWAN: I think that Ayman al Zawahiri was very much affected by bin Laden's idea, about struggle against the international enemies of Islam.
BOETTCHER: And early in 1998, bin Laden and al Zawahiri appeared together in Afghanistan to announce a fatwa, a decree calling for a jihad against Jews and crusaders. It called on Muslims worldwide to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military.
BERGEN: Ayman al Zawahiri's influence on bin Laden has been profound, according to a number of people who know both Zawahiri and bin Laden, he's influenced his thinking, to become more radical, more anti-American, and also more violent.
BOETTCHER: On August 6 of that year, a fax from al Zawahiri's group was sent to an Egyptian newspaper, warning that Islam Jihad was seek he revenge against America for the arrest of several of its members.
A day later, suicide bombers attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Al Zawahiri and bin Laden would be indicted by the U.S. for ordering the attack.
Peter Bergen believes al Zawahiri was a guiding force in the attack, which involved a number of Egyptians.
BERGEN: The relationship between Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda is essentially that they are same organization. They have cooperated for many, many years. The U.S. government says this effectively merged in '98, but really they merged long before that.
BOETTCHER: Days after the embassy bombings, al Zawahiri, considered media savvy, phoned a Pakistani journalist. Saying he was speaking on bin Laden's behalf, al Zawahiri denied responsibility for the attack, but urged Muslims all over the world to continue their jihad against the Americans and Jews.
An hour later, the U.S. launched cruise missiles in retaliation. Both bin Laden and al Zawahiri escaped injury.
Within weeks, there was another alleged plot by al Zawahiri's group, this time to bomb the U.S. embassy in Albania. But the attack was prevented, and more than 100 members of Islam Jihad were rounded up and put on trial by the Egyptian government.
Al Zawahiri was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia.
Now, in the wake of the Trade Center attacks, the Bush administration has pointed the finger not only at al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but also at Islamic Jihad and Ayman al Zawahiri. And Interpol has issued a worldwide red notice for al Zawahiri's arrest.
RASHWAN: Al Zawahiri became a kind of legend or myth and thanks to the America administration, al Zawahiri became the enemy perhaps number two of the United States. AL ZAWAHIRI: We want to speak to the whole word.
BOETTCHER: 20 years after he said he wanted to speak to the world, Ayman al Zawahiri may have achieved his goal.
Mike Boettcher, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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