Bin Laden's top lieutenant writes autobiography from Afghan cave

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt – In an autobiography reportedly smuggled out of an Afghan cave, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant wrote that he may not get another chance to speak out, citing "troubled circumstances" – an apparent reference to the U.S. military strikes.

A section of a manuscript attributed to Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian surgeon sentenced to death in Egypt for terrorist acts during the 1990s, appeared Sunday in the London-based Arab-language Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

Al-Zawahri, bin Laden and other top figures in the al-Qaida terrorist network are wanted by the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They are believed to be hiding in southern Afghanistan where the United States has been attacking since October.

"I wrote this book out of an obligation to our generation and the coming generations," says the manuscript attributed to the 50-year-old al-Zawahri. "I might not be able to write after this in the midst of the troubled circumstances and unstable conditions which the Islamic nation is going through."

According to the newspaper, the manuscript, titled "Knights Under the Prophet's Banner: Contemplations on the Jihad Movement," was smuggled from an Afghan cave into Pakistan and then brought to London by an unnamed Egyptian Islamic fundamentalist. It was obtained two weeks ago by the newspaper, which plans to publish it in eight or nine parts.

Mohammed al-Awwam, the newspaper's deputy-editor, would not reveal the identity of the Egyptian courier but said he was certain of the manuscript's authenticity.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Al-Awwam said that al-Zawahri had been working on the book for some time, but may have hurried to finish it after the United States began bombing.

Al-Zawahri ran the Egyptian Islamic Jihad before it merged with al-Qaida and has written several books on Islamic movements. The best known is "The Bitter Harvest," a critical assessment of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Zawahri is America's second most-wanted terrorist after bin Laden.

Since he and bin Laden established their global terrorist network, two American embassies in East Africa were bombed in 1998, the USS Cole was hit in Yemen last year and on Sept. 11, the World Trade Centers were destroyed and the Pentagon damaged.

In the published excerpts, al-Zawahri wrote that his Egyptian Jihad decided to blow up the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan in 1995 after realizing the U.S. Embassy was too difficult a target. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1999 for his role in that attack and for attempting to kill officials in Egypt.

Two suicide bombers rammed a pickup truck packed with explosives into the gate of the embassy in Islamabad on Nov. 19, 1995. The blast killed 15 people, including one diplomat, and wounded 59 others.

That attack was a response to an Egyptian-Pakistani agreement to locate and extradite Egyptian militants living in Pakistan, al-Zawahri wrote.

Al-Zawahri joined Egyptian Jihad in 1966. The group is a faction of a secretive militant organization that has been linked to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

AP-WS-12-03-01 1418EST