Mohamed al-Zawahiri, brother of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, has offered a truce between the group and the United States.
Zawahiri told Al-Masry Al-Youm that his proposed initiative would last for 10 years, open to renewal, during which time the United States would be committed to abstain from intervening in Muslims’ affairs and to release detainees in return for the group not targeting US and Western interests.
He described the initiative as providing room for reconciliation in a proper way, adding that deceased Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden had offered a similar initiative in 2004.
Zawahiri, who had been detained in an Egyptian prison since 1999, was released by the previously-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in March 2011 along with other Islamists jailed for political reasons.
But Egyptian authorities detained Zawahiri three days after his release, saying it found that he had been sentenced to death in absentia in 1998 over terrorism charges. In June 2011, a military court accepted Zawahiri’s appeal against the death sentence. He was declared innocent this March.
The US had launched a military campaign against terrorism after Al-Qaeda’s September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, which left 2,973 people dead.
The US in the same year invaded Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban-led government. Bin Laden was killed in a US military operation in Pakistan in May 2011. He was succeeded by Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
