newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ALICIA CRUZ

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

With the death of Al-Queda leader Osama bin Laden there will be a new face at the head of the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitive list, and it's likely to be Bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri who has served as the groups’ chief organizer and bin Laden’s closest mentor.

“Mr. Ayman is for bin Laden like the brain to the body,” Montasser al-Zayat, a lawyer in Cairo who once represented al- Zawahiri, told Reuters.

U.S. counterterrorism officials say Intel indicates that while the Egyptian born al-Zawahiri will become the new leader of Al-Queda, he will have difficulty maintaining the loyalties of its Gulf Arab followers, and his authority will not likely be accepted universally, wrote Spencer Ackerman, national security reporter and blogger for wired.com.

Described as the last "emir" of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, as of May 2, 2011, al- Zawahiri is now the primary target and sole figurehead of the terrorist network.

He came to international attention following the August 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings that killed 224 civilians and wounded over 5,000 in the East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. al-Zawahiri is currently under indictment in the U.S. for these bombings.

Three years later, the FBI named him as one of the top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists. The following month, the Taliban government announced his official Afghan citizenship on him, as well as that of bin Laden, Mohammed Atef, Saif al-Adl, and Shaykh Asim Abdulrahman.

A wanted poster issued by the U.S. Department of State for the Rewards for Justice Program names Al-Zawahiri, among others, as an international terrorist wanted for the murder of U.S. nationals outside the United States; conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals outside the United States; and attack on a federal facility resulting in death.