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Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri led a life of secrecy and violence

By Douglas Martin and Alan Cowell
New York Times·
13 mins to read

Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian-born surgeon-turned-jihadi who assumed the leadership of al-Qaeda after the killing of Osama bin Laden and who died at 71 in a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, over the weekend, according to US officials, led a life steeped in secrecy, betrayal, conspiracy and violence, most murderously in the September 11 attacks against the United States in 2001.

While bin Laden, who was killed by an American raid in 2011, was widely seen as the terrorist mastermind of

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