Al-Qaida says Al-Zawahri has succeeded Bin Laden
CAIRO. June 16. KAZINFORM Al-Qaida has selected its longtime No. 2 to succeed Osama Bin Laden following last month's US commando raid that killed the terror leader, according to a statement posted Thursday on a website affiliated with the network; Kazinform refers to Arab News.
Ayman Al-Zawahri, who will turn 60 next week, is believed to be operating from somewhere near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
He is the son of an upper middle class Egyptian family of doctors and scholars. His father was a pharmacology professor at Cairo University's medical school and his grandfather was the grand imam of Al-Azhar University, a premier center of religious study.
In a videotaped eulogy released earlier this month, Al-Zawahri warned that America faces not individual terrorists or groups but an international community of Muslims that seek to destroy it and its allies.
"Today, praise God, America is not facing an individual, a group or a faction," he said, wearing a white robe and turban with an assault rifle leaned on a wall behind him.
"It is facing a nation than is in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad." Al-Zawahri also heaped praise on Bin Laden, who was killed in a May 2 raid by US Navy SEALs in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, and criticized the US for burying him at sea; Kazinform cites Arab News.
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