Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif - Egyptian Islamic Jihad

Egyptian Islamic Jihad

Following the 1981 assassination of the President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat - who had signed a peace treaty with Israel two years earlier - thousands of Egyptian Islamists were rounded up. These included Zawahiri, who was charged with smuggling weapons, but not Al-Sharif who fled the country, was tried in absentia, and convicted. Al-Sharif left Egypt for the UAE in 1982, where he worked as a doctor. He then resided in Pakistan for few weeks before leaving for Saudi Arabia, and then went back to Pakistan again, where he worked for a Kuwaiti Red Crescent hospital in Peshawar.

In Pakistan Sharif worked with Ayman al-Zawahri to rebuild Egyptian Islamic Jihad in exile. In the mid-eighties, Sharif is thought to have become Egyptian Islamic Jihad’s emir, or chief. Al-Sharif denies this, saying that his role was merely one of offering “Sharia guidance.” Zawahiri, "whose reputation had been stained by his prison confessions", handled "tactical operations." Al-Sharif impressed other jihadis with his encyclopedic knowledge of the Koran and the Hadith. According to one source, al-Sharif stayed in the background, “Ayman was the one in front, but the real leader was Dr. Fadl.”