Assassination of Sadat

One of the pilgrims who had watched the takeover in Mecca had taken a Juhayman leaflet home with him to Egypt. According to Yaroslav Trofimov, author of The Siege of Mecca, he shared it and exciting tales of the Mecca events with his brother Khaled, a first lieutenant in the Egyptian army, who began an eighteen month "path to martyrdom." On October 6, 1981, men from group called Islamic Jihad, disguised as soldiers, assassinated Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat, in Cairo as he was viewing a military parade. It was Khaled who fired several bullets into Sadat. The reason: Sadat had betrayed Islam and had made peace with the Jews.

Hundreds of Islamic militants were rounded up. Among them was a 30-year-old medical doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for possessing an unlicensed pistol. He was from a wealthy family. From an early age, he had been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, and at the time of his arrest he had been a low ranking member of Islamic Jihad. He served three years in prison. He was recorded by television cameras shouting angrily in English from behind prison bars, saying ''We are Muslims who believe in our religion. We're trying our best to establish an Islamic state and Islamic society.'' Zawahiri would eventually to be the leader of a group called al-Qaeda, to be well known in late 2001.

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