DUBAI: Al-Qaeda second in command Ayman Al-Zawahiri on Saturday announced that a string of key players from Egypt s Jamaa Islamiya militant group were joining the global terror network, in a taped message aired by Arabic television Al-Jazeera.
In the message, the Egyptian-born Al-Zawahiri welcomed a number of the Jamaa Islamiya s leadership under the al-Qaeda banner.
Among them are Omar Abdel Rahman, Abu Khalil Al-Hakayma, Mohammed Al-Islambuli, Refaa Taha et Mohammed Mustafa Al-Mokri, said Al-Zawahiri.
They have decided to merge with Al-Qaeda to unite the forces of the [Muslim] nation into one, to face its enemies which are launching the most ferocious campaign ever seen against Islam, he said.
The group is Egypt s main militant Islamist organization. It was behind the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat and continued to battle the country s military in the 1980s.
Its six-year bombing campaign in the 1990s killed 1,300 people.
Its members were also suspected of playing a role in the 1997 attack in Luxor, Egypt, which killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians.
While the mainstream group s Egyptian-based leaders renounced violence nine years ago, the move sparked a split, with several exiled figures rejecting it.
Al-Zawahiri slammed those who had given up the armed struggle.
A group of our brothers in the Gama a … have swallowed the allegations of the Egyptian government and the United States and have strayed from the immaculate path, based on the Koran and the words and deeds of the Prophet, he said.
Zawahiri s message was accompanied by a recording by Abu Khalil Al-Hakayma, who also criticized Gama a leaders who had renounced violence.
Hakayma was an active member of the group in the 1970s. Like many Arab Islamists, he later headed to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation.
Mohammed Al-Islambuli is a brother of one of Sadat s killers
Rahman, the group s spiritual leader, is currently serving a life sentence in the United States for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. AFP
