President Joe Biden said on Monday that the United States had executed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda and one of the most wanted terrorists in the world who was thought to be the planner of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Biden claimed in a televised speech that the attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, had taken place on Saturday. He stated, “I gave the final authority to go grab him,” and added that there had been no harm done to any civilians.
Biden declared, “Justice has been served, and this terrorist commander is no more.”
There were no US troops in Afghanistan, according to a senior administration official, and Zawahiri was killed by a drone hit while standing on the balcony of a home in Kabul.
Zawahiri’s presence in the Afghan capital Kabul, according to the official, was a “obvious violation” of a deal the Taliban and the US made in Doha in 2020 that allowed for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Since American forces left Afghanistan on August 31, 2021, it is known that this was the first over-the-horizon attack by the US on an Al-Qaeda target there.
Since the 9/11 attacks that claimed over 3,000 lives in the United States, Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon who grew up in a privileged Cairo family before converting to violent radicalism, had been on the run for 20 years.
