Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

The family of the terrorist Ayman Al-Zawahri has acknowledged the death of his wife and five children. They published an obituary notice and received condolences in the family house that is at Al-Nahda Square in the high-class district Al-Maadi. In contrast to this, the family of Al-Zawahri’s wife has not acknowledged yet the deaths of their daughter Mrs. Azza Anwar Nuwerah and her children.



The Nuwerah family which also lives in Al-Maadi refused to publish an obituary notice or receive condolences hoping that the news of the death of the family of Al-Zawahri, leader of the Jihad group, is not true. The Nuwerah family is saying that the information they have received is not certain and did not come from a neutral source, therefore they prefer to wait one more week before publishing an obituary notice, unless the news proves to be not true.



The family of Ayman Al-Zawahri’s wife consists of her brother, Essam Anwar Nuwerah, a computer engineer, and her mother Mrs. Nabila Galal, who has no other grandchildren except for those of her daughter Azza, Al-Zawahri’s wife. It is said that all of them were killed during an American bombardment on one of the houses where families and wives of Arab-Afghans live at Kandahar.



Mrs. Azza graduated from the Philosophy Department in the Faculty of Arts, at Cairo University, and Al-Zawahri got married to her in 1979. They had their first daughter, Fatma, in 1980 before he went to prison in 1981 in the "Al-Jihad" case.



He had his second daughter, Omayma, after he came out of prison. After that he traveled to Saudi Arabia and from there he went to Pakistan where in 1988 he had his only male child, Muhammad, who is 13 years old [this year].



On the other hand, Al-Zawahri’s family consists of his mother Mrs. Omayma Azzam, his brother, Engineer Hussein Al-Zawahri and his sister Dr. Heba Al-Zawahri. His family received condolences at their apartment in Al-Nahda Street. It was noticeable that all women in this family do not wearing niqab [a head covering which covers all the head of a woman revealing only her eyes] but rather hijab [a head-cover that covers only the hiar]. The family received all those who came to offer condolences but were extremely careful not to open any discussion concerning the life of their son Ayman or his activities in Afghanistan, stressing that all they, like any [other] Egyptian, know about their son, comes from newspapers and TV channels.