Abbud al-Zumar

Who is Abbud al-Zumar?

Abbud al-Zumar is an Egyptian Islamist and fundamentalist and former military intelligence colonel in the Egyptian Army.

Born into one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in the Giza Governorate, he was founder and first emir of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, succeeded by Ayman al-Zawahiri, an organization which merged into al-Qaeda in 1998.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in Cairo after being captured by the Egyptian government for being implicated in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat on 6 October 1981. He had previously attempted to assassinate him personally on several occasions, but had failed, leaving it up to Tanzim al-Jihad, supplying them with ammunition.

His plan was "to kill the main leaders of the country, capture the headquarters of the army and State Security, the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing - he expected - a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country." According to Reuters, Abbud and his cousin and brother-in-law Tarek al-Zumar were Egypt's most famous political prisoners, commenting that "to many Egyptians, Zumar's name evokes a violent chapter in the history of a country that has been an incubator for Islamist militancy."