Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri is a plagiarist who worked for Sudanese intelligence before his handlers grew tired of his jokes, his former spiritual mentor has claimed in a newspaper article.
The accusations are the latest in an increasingly bitter war of words between Zawahiri and Sayed Imam, the former spiritual guide of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement to which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s deputy once belonged.
Imam was highly regarded for his erudition by Islamist militants.
The feud began last year after Imam penned a book from his Egyptian prison cell denouncing al-Qaeda for killing innocent people and being responsible for the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Zawahiri responded with his own book, The Exoneration, saying Imam’s book was written with the help of the “crusaders and Jews.”
This nettled Imam, who countered with a broadside against his former student in an essay on The Shaming of the Exoneration, published this week by the independent Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Yom.
In the essay, which is replete with insults, Imam invites Zawahiri to partake in an ancient custom of invoking God’s wrath on the liar in a dispute.
Imam recalls how Zawahiri allegedly confided to him his suspicion in the mid-1990s that Bin Laden was a Saudi agent, because he did not supply his group with money.
He accused Zawahiri of promising Sudanese intelligence that he would conduct operations in Egypt, saying Zawahiri had told him the Sudanese paid him US$100,000.
One such operation was the attempted assassination of former Egyptian prime minister Atif Sidqi in 1993, which led to the arrests of Islamic Jihad members in Egypt and the execution of six plotters.
“While the six were on their way to the execution room, Zawahiri was sitting with his friends in Sudanese intelligence telling them funny jokes, although they were expecting a discussion on important and dangerous matters,” Imam wrote. “Zawahiri had nothing to tell them, and he continued until the Sudanese got bored of his jokes and complained to his friends: ‘Find us another man to talk to; all he knows is ‘Abu Lama’ jokes’.”
Abu Lama was a character in an Egyptian radio comedy who was a lying fantasist.
Imam also wrote that Zawahiri took credit for a book Imam had written.
The exchanges between the two have left some former Islamist militants in Egypt rolling their eyes.
“This is embarrassing for Imam,” Kamal Habib, a former Jihad member, said. “I don’t think he realizes what it does to his image.”
Montasser el-Zayat, a lawyer who was once jailed for suspected membership of the Gamaa Islamiya, another Egyptian militant group, said Imam’s essay detracted from his earlier works.
“If he’s participating in a debate, he shouldn’t be mad if someone contradicts him,” Zayat said. “This is a settling of accounts. It devalues the Murajaat. He’s come down to trading accusations, and settling accounts.”
The Murajaat (Reviews) was a series of essays published by jailed Islamist militants — many of whom are now free — denouncing violence and revisiting the ideological basis for modern-day jihad.
Imam, who was jailed in Yemen after the Sept. 11 attacks on the US and was extradited to Egypt in 2004, is still in jail. He repeats his view that the 2001 attacks were a contravention of Islamic laws of war.
He also writes that Zawahiri and Bin Laden blaming the West for problems in the Muslim world is tantamount to disbelief in Koranic passages that say each nation is responsible for its own ills.
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