The Looming Tower (64 page)

minister of education:
al-Khaledi,
Sayyid Qutb: al-shaheed,
154.

“Write the words”:
interview with Mahfouz Azzam.

government refused:
interview with Mohammed Qutb.

2. The Sporting Club

32
Maadi:
Much of the history and sociology of Maadi comes from interviews with Samir W. Raafat and from his book,
Maadi.

33
Dr. Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri:
Information about the Zawahiri family is largely drawn from interviews and personal communications with Mahfouz Azzam and Omar Azzam.

highly unpopular:
Yunan Rizk, “Al-Azhar’s
1934,
”
Al-Ahram Weekly,
May 13–19, 2004.

34
private medical clinic:
interview with Khaled Abou el-Fadl.

35
Michel Chalhub:
Raafat,
Maadi,
185.

“inhumane”:
interview with Mahfouz Azzam.

“genius”:
interview with Zaki Mohamed Zaki.

36
“From tomorrow”:
interview with Mahfouz Azzam.

37
“We don’t want”:
interview with Omar Azzam.

“Nasserite regime”:
al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 3.

38
Parents were fearful:
interview with Zaki Mohamed Zaki.

39
“Then history”:
al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 6.

In return for their support:
interview with Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

40
even to his family:
Chanaa Rostom, “li awil mara shaqiqat al-Zawahiri tatahadith,” [For the First Time Zawahiri’s Sister Speaks],
Akher Sa’a,
October 24, 2001.

A joke:
interview with Mahfouz Azzam and Omar Azzam.

41
provided them with arms:
interview with Hisham Kassem.

in small cells:
Cooley,
Unholy Wars,
40.

42
fewer than ten members:
interview with Abdul Haleem Mandour.

Four of these cells:
interview with Kamal Habib.

43
“Before that”:
interview with Essam Nowair.

44
become a martyr:
interview with Omar Azzam.

“My connection”:
al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 2.

45
had to use honey:
interview with Mahfouz Azzam.

Writing to his mother:
interview with Omar Azzam; Robert Marquand, “The Tenets of Terror,”
Christian Science Monitor,
October 18, 2001.

Through his connection:
interview with Omar Azzam.

recruiting for jihad:
interview with Mahmoun Fandy.

46
“a training course”:
al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 2.

47
“lunatic madman”:
Ibrahim,
Egypt Islam and Democracy,
30 n.

“Yes we are reactionaries”:
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, “Speech at Feyziyeh Theological School,” August 24, 1979; reproduced in Rubin and Rubin,
Anti-American Terrorism,
34.

“Islam says”:
Taheri,
Holy Terror,
226–27.

Iranian revolution:
Abdelnasser,
Islamic Movement,
73.

48
five hundred Quranic verses:
Roy Mottahedeh, personal communication.

final speech:
Guenena, “‘Jihad’ an ‘Islamic Alternative,’” 80–81.

49
Sadat dissolved:
Kepel,
Jihad,
85.

“No politics in religion”:
Abdo,
No God but God,
54.

Zumar’s plan:
1981 interrogation of Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“a noble person”:
al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 5.

“something missing”:
interview with Yassir al-Sirri.

51
Essam al-Qamari came out:
1981 interrogation of Ayman al-Zawahiri.

52
Citadel:
interview with Montassir al-Zayyat.

53
Two weeks later:
interview with Fouad Allam.

“Let him pray”:
interview with Omar Azzam.

Zawahiri went to the mosque:
interview with Mahfouz Azzam.

“The toughest thing”:
al-Zawahiri, “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 11.

Qamari was shot:
interview with Kamal Habib.

55
marks of torture:
Fouad Allam, who allegedly oversaw the torture personally, claims that no torture took place; it’s all a legend, he says. There may be some truth in that; many of the stories that prisoners tell are so gothic that they have the ring of fantasy, and certainly they have been hawked to reporters in order to discredit the regime and enhance the standing of the Islamists. Allam gave me a 1982 video of a young Montassir al-Zayyat (who had told me of being repeatedly beaten and given electroshock) buoyantly greeting incoming prisoners at Torah Prison and telling them how well he had been treated. “They even gave me this Quran,” he says, holding up a pocket-size book. Zayyat now maintains that he was tortured into making the statement, although Kamal Habib, whose hands are spotted with scars from cigarette burns, says that Zayyat was never tortured. “It’s just something he says to the media,” he told me.

The question is what happened to Zawahiri. “The higher you were in the organization, the more you were tortured,” Habib says. “Ayman knew a number of officers and had some weapons. He was subjected to severe torture.” Several former prisoners told me that the most common form of torture was to have one’s hands tied behind him and then to be hoisted onto a doorjamb—hanging, sometimes for hours, by one’s hands behind one’s back. For Habib, it took years to lose the numbness in his arms. Zawahiri himself never talks about his own experience, but he writes, “The brutal treadmill of torture broke bones, flayed skins, shocked nerves, and killed souls. Its methods were lowly. It detained women, committed sexual assaults, called men feminine names, starved prisoners, gave them bad food, cut off water, and prevented visits to humiliate the detainees” (al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 4). One can imagine that the humiliation was all the greater for a man as prideful as Dr. Zawahiri.

Zawahiri’s reference to the use of “wild dogs” as a form of torture is a frequent allegation by ex-prisoners. Sayyid Qutb was allegedly mauled by dogs during his second arrest. Dogs are lowly outcasts in Islamic culture, so such a punishment is particularly degrading.

56
“We were defeated”:
interview with Usama Rushdi.

driver arrived:
ibid.

57
Zawahiri pointed out:
interview with Montassir al-Zayyat.

58
they had had visions:
Ibrahim,
Egypt Islam and Democracy,
20.

“model young Egyptians”:
ibid., 19.

“You have trivialized”:
interview with Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

worried about the political consequences:
interview with Mahfouz Azzam.

a surgery fellowship:
Heba al-Zawahiri, personal communication.

59
a tourist visa to Tunisia:
interview with Usama Rushdi.

3. The Founder

60
arrived in the Kingdom in
1985
:
interview with Ahmed Badeeb.

“scars left on his body”:
al-Zayyat,
The Road to al-Qaeda,
31.

testifying against his comrades:
ibid., 49.

“situation in Egypt”:
Tahta al-Mijhar
[Under the Microscope], al-Jazeera, February 20, 2003.

61
Zawahiri and bin Laden met:
al-Zayyat, “Islamic Groups,” part 4,
Al-Hayat,
January 12, 2005. Zayyat claims that Zawahiri gave him this information, although Zayyat did not tell me this when we spoke in 2002. At that time, he said that Zawahiri and bin Laden probably met in 1986 in Peshawar. This new information, he contends, is based on subsequent conversations with Zawahiri. Mohammed Salaah, the
Al-Hayat
correspondent in Cairo, told me that, according to his sources, the two men met in 1985, which would have been in Jeddah. Others speculate that the first meeting of Zawahiri and bin Laden took place in Pakistan; for instance, Jamal Ismail told Peter Bergen that the first meeting of the two men was in Peshawar in 1986. Bergen,
The Osama bin Laden I Know,
63.

“If our first parent”:
Burton,
Personal Narrative,
2:274.

bin Laden’s was buried here:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesperson.

death in an air crash in
1967: Othman Milyabaree and Abdullah Hassanein, “Al-Isamee al-Kabeer Alathee Faqadathoo al-Bilad” [The Big Self-Made Man the Country Has Lost],
Okaz,
September 7, 1967.

62
builders and architects:
Eric Watkins, personal communication.

Ethiopia:
interview with bin Laden family spokesperson.

boat to Jizan:
interview with Saleh M. Binladin.

massacring thousands:
Aburish,
The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall,
24. According to Aburish, “No fewer than 400,000 people were killed and wounded, for the Ikhwan did not take prisoners, but mostly killed the vanquished. Well over a million inhabitants of the territories conquered by Ibn Saud fled to other countries.” The Saudi historian Madawi al-Rasheed notes that such figures are hard to credit, since there was no one doing the counting, but she writes, in personal communication, “The scale of Saudi atrocities in the name of unifying the country is massive.” She adds, “The ikhwan were nothing but a mercenary force mobilised by Ibn Saud to fight his own wars and to serve his own purposes. Once they did the job for him he massacred them using other mercenaries, this time the sedentary population of southern Najd, other tribes, and the British Royal Air force stationed in Kuwait and Iraq at the time.”

63
theological innovations:
Schwartz,
Two Faces of Islam,
69ff.

they could kill:
Khaled Abou el Fadl, “The Ugly Modern and the Modern Ugly,” 33–77.

64
Karl Twitchell:
Lacey,
The Kingdom,
231ff; Lippman,
Inside the Mirage,
15ff.

had begun as a dockworker:
interview with Nawaf Obaid.

one glass eye:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesperson.

the result of a blow:
interview with Jamal Khalifa. A bin Laden family spokesperson disputes the story about the teacher hitting Mohammed bin Laden; he says the eye was lost in an accident in Ethiopia. Before protective goggles were commonly used, bricklayers and stonecutters often were blinded by chips of rock or mortar. I rely on the schoolteacher story because Khalifa heard it from his wife, who was close to her father. Other bin Laden brothers I’ve spoken to admit they have no special knowledge about the loss of their father’s vision.

65
“his signature”:
interview with Saleh M. Binladin.

“dark, friendly, and energetic”:
interview with Michael M. Ameen, Jr.

Aramco began a program:
Thomas C. Barger, “Birth of a Dream,”
Saudi Aramco World
35, no. 3 (May/June 1984).

Aramco sponsorship:
interview with Prince Turki al-Faisal. “Aramco was really the only institution that built things,” Prince Turki told me. “When King Abdul Aziz wanted something done he would ask Aramco to do it, or get their advice. That was how bin Laden came into the picture. He was recommended.”

“raised as a laborer”:
Othman Milyabaree and Abdullah Hassanein, “Al-Isamee al-Kabeer Alathee Faqadathoo al-Bilad” [The Big Self-Made Man the Country Has Lost],
Okaz,
September 7, 1967.

unprofitable projects:
interview with anonymous Saudi source.

They called him
mu
‘
alim
:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

renovating houses:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesperson.

minister of finance:
Mohammed Besalama, “Al-Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden al-Mu‘alem” [Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden, the Teacher],
Okaz,
June
2, 1984.

65
Osama bin Laden would recall:
interview with Ali Soufan.

drove the king’s car:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesman.

first concrete building:
anonymous Saudi source.

minister of public works:
Mohammed Besalama, “Al-Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden al-Mu‘alem” [Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden, the Teacher],
Okaz,
June 2, 1984; interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesman.

pay the same fee:
Mohammed Besalama, “Al-Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden al-Mu‘alem” [Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden, the Teacher],
Okaz,
June 2, 1984.

one well-paved road:
Mayer, “The House of bin Laden.”

66
largest customer:
anonymous Saudi source. A spokesperson for the Caterpillar Corporation refused comment.

donated the asphalt:
Lippman,
Inside the Mirage,
49.

Umm Kalthoum:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

“We have to organize”:
interview with Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz.

throwing money:
Lacey,
The Kingdom,
302.