Zawahiri, 71, was a key architect behind multiple attacks on the US and was “deeply involved” in planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Biden said.
“People around the world no longer have to fear the vicious and determined killer. The United States continues to demonstrate our resolve and our ability to defend the American people against those who seek to harm us,” Biden said from the balcony of the Blue Room of the White House.
Here’s what you need to know about Zawahiri and the US strike against him.
Born in 1951, Zawahiri grew up in an upper-class neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt, the son of a prominent doctor and the grandson of renowned scholars.
His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahiri, was an imam at al-Azhar University in Cairo. His great uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary of the Arab League.
Zawahiri was imprisoned for his involvement in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
“We want to talk to the whole world. Who are we? Who are we?” he said in a prison interview.
By then, Zawahiri, a young doctor, was already a committed terrorist who for years plotted to overthrow the Egyptian government and sought to replace it with fundamentalist Islamic rule. He proudly endorsed the assassination of Sadat after the Egyptian leader made peace with Israel.
What was his relationship with Osama bin Laden?
Zawahiri left Egypt in 1985 and went to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he worked as a surgeon treating fighters who were engaged with Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
It is there that Zawahiri met bin Laden, a prominent Mujahideen leader who had also left behind a privileged education to join the fight in Afghanistan. The two became close, linked by their common bond as “Afghan Arabs”.
After meeting in Afghanistan, bin Laden and Zawahiri appeared together in early 1998 announcing the formation of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, formally merging the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda.
At one point, he acted as bin Laden’s personal physician.
“We are working with brother bin Laden,” he said when announcing the merger of his terrorist group in May 1998. “We have known him for over 10 years. We fought with him here in Afghanistan.”
Together, the two terrorist leaders signed a fatwa, or declaration: “The judgment of killing and fighting Americans and their allies, whether civilian or military, is an obligation on every Muslim.”
What role did Zawahiri play in Al Qaeda’s attacks on the US?
Attacks on the US and its facilities began shortly after bin Laden and Zawahiri’s fatwa, with suicide bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 5,000 more.
Then there was the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, when suicide bombers on a ship detonated their ship, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39 others.
The culmination of Zawahiri’s terrorist plot came on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked airliner, bound for Washington, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers struggled.
Before and after the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri appeared in numerous videos and audio tapes calling for attacks on Western targets and urging Muslims to support his cause.
Some Egyptians traced Zawahiri’s anger to the United States at what many Afghan Arabs felt was a betrayal by the CIA to support his cause after the Soviets left Afghanistan and the country descended into tribal anarchy .
Others date Zawahiri’s anger to 1998, when US officials pushed for the extradition of some members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad from Albania to stand trial in Egypt on terrorism charges.
Zawahiri’s brother, Mohammad, told CNN in 2012: “Before you call me and my brother terrorists, let’s define what that means. If you mean those who are bloodthirsty killers without mercy, it’s not than we are,” he said.
“We’re just trying to reclaim some of our rights that have been hijacked by Western powers throughout history.”
When did Zawahiri start leading Al Qaeda?
Zawahiri became the leader of Al Qaeda after US forces killed bin Laden in 2011.
He was constantly on the move when the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began after the 9/11 attacks. At one point, he narrowly escaped an American attack in Afghanistan’s rugged, mountainous Tora Bora region, an attack that left his wife and children dead.
Zawahiri “was not a charismatic leader in the bin Laden mold,” CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen said Monday. “He didn’t prove to be a very competent leader of al-Qaeda. But the reason I think he was killed in Afghanistan over the weekend was that he was starting to take a lot more risks.”
“According to the United Nations, it had released an unprecedented number of videos. Every time you shoot a video, there’s the chain of custody of that video, getting it out, maybe someone takes the video,” Bergen continued.
“So he was becoming more prominent. And, I think, it seems to me that maybe that’s why he was spotted.”
A briefing of a group of United Nations experts last week noted that Zawahiri’s apparent increase in comfort and ability to communicate has coincided with the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the consolidation of power of key al-Qaeda allies within his de facto administration.
Zawahiri’s last known public address was an audio message released on July 13 by Al Qaeda’s media arm.
How did the US kill Zawahiri?
The United States launched a “precision counter-terrorism operation” in Afghanistan against Zawahiri, who was holed up in a safe house in Kabul, a senior government official told reporters on Monday.
According to the official, a “tailor-made precision airstrike” with two Hellfire missiles was carried out at 9:48 pm ET on Saturday, July 30 — 6:18 am Kabul time — by an airstrike unmanned and Biden authorized meetings with his cabinet and key advisers.
There were no US personnel on the ground in Kabul at the time of the strike.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Kylie Atwood, Natasha Bertrand and Donald Judd contributed to this report.