No Solution: ‘Death will not affect al Qaeda’

Friend of Al-Zawahiri pleads with al Qaeda supporters against revenge attacks.

CAIRO: A founding member of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad and friend of al Qaeda’s new chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri told AFP on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden’s death will not affect the organisation and pleaded with al Qaeda supporters against revenge attacks.

Aboud al-Zumur, who was in jail with Zawahiri after the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, said Bin Laden was a “martyr” whose death at the hands of US special forces in Pakistan “will solve nothing”.

“Al Qaeda is not a person, it is an institution,” said Zumur, who was freed from prison after a popular revolt ousted former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February. “Solving the problem entails withdrawing from occupied territories and a balance in US policy towards Palestine.”

Speaking in Cairo, Zumur also pleaded with Bin Laden’s sympathisers not to take revenge for the al Qaeda leader’s assassination. “I say to them, be patient. Don’t seek revenge. If you attack tourists or embassies, you will be attacking innocents.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 4^th, 2011.