Al-Zawahri will succeed Bin Laden, announces Al-Qaeda
The new terrorist leader, son of an upper-class Egyptian family, is around 60 years old.
An Al-Qaeda-affiliated website reported on Thursday that Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri is set to succeed leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces on May 2nd in an attack in Pakistan. The then-number two of Al-Qaeda, nearly 60 years old, had recently appeared in a video in which he stated his commitment to continuing the jihad (holy war) against the West. "We will continue the jihad until we expel the invaders from Muslim lands," Zawahiri said.
He is the son of an upper-class Egyptian family composed of doctors and academics. Zawahiri's father was a professor of Pharmacology at Cairo Medical University, and his grandfather was the Grand Imam (Islamic leader) of Al-Azhar University, a center for religious studies. In the recently released video, Zawahiri appeared alongside an automatic weapon, saying that "the man who terrorized the US in life will continue to terrorize after death." He completed the message with a phrase often used by Bin Laden: "Westerners will never be safe while we live, unless they leave our countries."