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Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri was a key member of the groups terrorist activities long before he took over from evil mastermind Osama bin Laden.
The US announced the death of 71-year-old al-Zawahri in a brutal drone strike over the weekend, putting an end to years of massacre plotting.
Egyptian-born al-Zawahri succeeded Bin Laden following the latter's death in 2011, who was also killed by Americans in a mission carried out by US Navy Seals in Pakistan.
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The first time the world came to know al-Zawahri was in 1981, when he stood in a white robe a courtroom cage after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat.
The trained surgeon, nicknamed The Doctor, was found not guilty but served a three-year jail term for illegal arms possession.
"When he came out of prison he was a completely different person," said a doctor who studied with Zawahiri and declined to be named.
His terrorist stock grew as he took over the leadership of Islamic Jihad in Egypt in 1993.
Over 1,200 Egyptians were killed in his efforts to overthrow the government and instil an Islamic regime.
Authorities stepped up their response after an assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak in June of 1995.
But the brutal al-Zawahri responded by ordering two cars filled with explosives to smash through the gates of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 16 people.
An Egyptian military court sentenced Zawahiri to death in absentia in 1999.
Around this time, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) led by Al-Zawahiri merged with Al Qaeda.
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After his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, al-Zawahiri was believed to have helped to organise the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, killing 3000.
The FBI put a $25 million (around £20.4 million) bounty on his head while adding him to its most wanted list.
The 71-year-old appeared in a video last year commemorating the 20 year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, despite rumours that he died months earlier.
He also had a notable feud with former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, because he accused Zawahiri and strictly Sunni Al Qaeda of “opposing sectarian attacks on Shiites".
The terrorist was also miffed over the ISIS leader's comment that Al Qaeda was "prepared to work with Christian leaders,” something al-Zawahri said was lies because "to other than Allah we do not kneel."
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The son of a pharmacology professor, al-Zawahri was raised in Cairo's leafy Maadi suburb. Ironically, the suburb was popular with Western expats that al-Zawahiri later railed against.
Zawahiri first embraced Islamic fundamentalism at the age of 15, inspired by the revolutionary ideas of Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb.
Qutb was an Islamist executed in 1966 on charges of trying to overthrow the state, quite like Zawahiri did years later with EIJ.
But his story came to an end yesterday, August 1, when US President Joe Biden confirmed that the Islamic leader was killed by a drone strike over the weekend as he stood on the balcony of a safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan.
It is not immediately clear who will succeed Al-Zawahiri as the leader of the terrorist group following his death.
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