Al Zawahiri, considered more dangerous than Bin Laden, will be the next chief of Al Quaeda. Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in Pakistan on Sunday, was said to be Al Quaeda's inspiration. His deputy Al Zawahiri is seen as more dangerous than Bin Laden. He was the real brains that steered operations, including the September 11 attacks, and that has earned him a $US25 million bounty on his head. The FBI's list of most wanted terrorists states that he was also Osama's personal doctor. As bin Laden withdrew from the public eye after 2004, it was often up to al Zawahiri to motivate the group's followers and to shoot out statements at the world through video tapes.


Al Zawahiri hails from a wealthy Egyptian family. His father was a reputed physician and one of his grandfathers a prayer leader at Cairo's Al-Azhar institute, the highest authority for Sunni Muslims. Al Zawahiri met bin Laden when thousands of Islamist fighters from around the world flooded into Afghanistan during the their 1980s jihad, or holy war, against Soviet forces. He became involved with Egypt's radical Muslim community at a young age and was reportedly arrested when he was as young as 15 for being a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's oldest fundamentalist group. Al-Zawahiri was jailed for three years in Egypt for militancy and was implicated in the 1981 assassination of president Anwar Sadat and the massacre of foreign tourists at the city of Luxor in 1997.

For several years, US and Pakistani forces both hunted for Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden in their presumed hiding place along the barren mountains dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan. In January 2006, Al Zawahiri escaped a US missile raid on a village in Pakistan's remote tribal areas. Up to 18 others died, including four Al Qaeda operatives and several civilians. Curretly, Al Zawahiri is said to have surfaced at Peshawar in Pakisrtan.