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6 unusual facts about Egyptian Islamic Jihad


Egyptian Islamic Jihad

It is "likely that the notion of suicide bombing" was inspired by Hezbollah as al-Zawahiri had been to Iran to raise money, and had sent his underling Ali Mohamed, "among others, to Lebanon to train with Hezbollah".

In the mid-1980s, in Peshawar Pakistan, the militants reconstituted themselves as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, "with very loose ties to their nominal imprisoned leader, Abbud al-Zumar".

Although Ayman al-Zawahiri was "the one in front", Al-Sharif was the actual leader.

At this point, Marc Sageman (a former foreign service officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989), says "the EIJ became a free-floating network without any real ties to its original society or to its surrounding society".

al-Zawahiri convened a Sharia court, where Musab confessed he had been given explosives by the Egyptians which he was told to detonate at the next Shura council meeting.

Rabei Osman

Italian and Spanish arrest warrants suggest he became a member of the terrorist organization "Egyptian Islamic Jihad", one of al-Qaeda's backbone groups, which was led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's right hand man and mentor.


Anas al-Libi

The indictment accuses al-Libi of surveillance of potential British, French, and Israeli targets in Nairobi, in addition to the American embassy in that city, as part of a conspiracy by al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Fouad Hussein

It is based on interviews with senior Islamic militants, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Saif al-Adel, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad.


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