Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian citizen who founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group, took over for Osama bin Laden as the leader of Al Qaeda when bin Laden was killed in May 2011. He was already considered the group’s central ideologue and one of the brains behind the 9/11 attacks.
There is a $25 million bounty on information leading to Mr. Zawahiri’s arrest. With the death of Mr. bin Laden, who was also one of the original 22 people on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists released in October 2001, Zawahiri is reportedly now the world’s most-wanted living terrorist. The US has indicted him for his alleged role in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Tanzinia and Nairobi.
He went into hiding after the US overthrew the Taliban in late 2001, supposedly in the remote region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and survived a US drone strike in Pakistan in 2006.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on a May 5 trip to India, "There are several significant leaders still on the run. Zawahiri, who inherited the leadership from bin Laden, is somewhere, we believe, in Pakistan."
