al Jihad

The Egyptian Islamic extremist group al Jihad (aka Egyptian Islamic Jihad; Egyptian al Jihad; Islamic Jihad; Jihad Group; New Jihad) is said to [Page 26]maintain close ties with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Although exact numbers are unknown, the organization is believed to have several hundred committed members. Active since the 1970s, the militant organization's goal is to overthrow the secular Egyptian government and replace it with an Islamic state. al Jihad developed into a powerful force in the 1980s, specializing in armed attacks against high-level members of the Egyptian government. Unlike the Egyptian extremist group Gama'a al Islamiyya, however, al Jihad has never targeted foreign tourists in Egypt.

In November 1981, group members assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. During a military parade, they disguised themselves as soldiers, surrounded Sadat, and they shot and killed him in front of Egyptian television cameras. al Jihad also claimed responsibility for the foiled assassination attempts on Interior Minister Hassan al Alfi in August 1993 and Prime Minister Atef Sedky in November 1993. As a consequence of these attacks, Egyptian security forces began to crack down on fundamentalists. Despite international protests, officials held suspects without trial and used torture during interrogation. In response, many al Jihad members fled the country.

According to the U.S. State Department, al Jihad has not carried out an attack inside Egypt since 1993, preferring to work outside that country. In 1995, al Jihad bombed the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 17 people. Three years later, the group planned an attack against the U.S. embassy in Albania, but the effort was foiled.

During the 1990s, al Jihad divided into two factions: the first, and perhaps less notorious, faction led by Abbud al Zumar, an original Jihad leader currently imprisoned in Egypt; the second faction led by the Egyptian physician Ayman al Zawahiri, who was a close advisor to bin Laden. One of al Jihad's founding members, Zawahiri met bin Laden during the Afghan guerrilla war against the Soviet Union. He is said to have influenced al Qaeda's growing anti-Americanism, and he is suspected of having been instrumental in planning the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

al Jihad and al Qaeda announced a merger in 1998, saying that they had formed the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. After Zawahiri merged his faction of al Jihad with al Qaeda, many of his members became known as bin Laden's foot soldiers. Egyptian authorities have accused al Jihad members of providing tactical support to al Qaeda, including forging documents and transferring money. al Jihad operatives have been arrested worldwide, and in 1999, Egyptian courts conducted a large-scale trial of 107 terror suspects, largely al Jihad members.

In mid-2007, as part of its “de-radicalization” program, Egypt released more than 130 jailed members of al Jihad in exchange for their renouncing violence. The year also saw a series of publications by Sayyid Imam al Sharif, better known by the nom de guerre Dr. Fadl, who led al Jihad along with Zawahiri in the 1980s and 1990s. Sharif was arrested in Yemen in 2001 and extradited to Egypt three years later. In his 2007 publications, he denounced terrorist violence as un-Islamic, sparking a lengthy rebuttal from Zawahiri. Sharif's refutation of violence is seen as especially important because his earlier writings provided doctrinal justification for terrorism and were frequently cited by al Qaeda.

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