The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [215]
Imad Mugniyah: Head of Hezbollah’s security service who designed the 1983 suicide car bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine Corps and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut in 1983; met with Zawahiri and bin Laden in Sudan and provided training for al-Qaeda. He remains under Iranian protection.
Hosni Mubarak: President of Egypt since 1981.
Shukri Mustafa: Leader of the Takfir wa Hejira movement in Egypt. Executed in 1978.
Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil: Taliban foreign minister who later surrendered to American forces and then joined the government of Hamid Karzai.
Gamal Abdul Nasser: Leader of the 1952 Egyptian revolution; fiery nationalist who transformed politics in the Arab world. He and Sayyid Qutb had radically differing views on the future of Egypt—a difference that eventually led Nasser to have Qutb executed in 1966. Nasser died of a heart attack four years later.
Azza Nowair: Ayman al-Zawahiri’s wife. She died in an American air strike in November 2001.
Mullah Mohammed Omar: One-eyed mystic who founded the Taliban in 1992 and essentially ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until the invasion by allied forces in 2001. His whereabouts are unknown.
John O’Neill: A native of Atlantic City, New Jersey, O’Neill became a special agent of the FBI in July 1976, assigned to the Baltimore office. He went to FBI headquarters in April 1987, where he supervised investigations of white collar crime. In 1991, he was appointed assistant special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the bureau; then in 1995 he returned to headquarters to be the chief of the counterterrorism section. He was appointed special agent in charge of the National Security Division in the FBI’s New York office on January 1, 1997. He resigned from the FBI on August 22, 2001; the next day he started work as the World Trade Center’s chief of security. He was fifty years old when he died on 9/11.
Mohammed al-‘Owhali: Convicted bomber of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi; now in an American prison serving a life sentence.
Thomas Pickard: Acting director of the FBI from June 25, 2001, until September 4, 2001. He retired two months later.
Mohammed Qutb: Sayyid Qutb’s brother, also a widely read author and thinker; took refuge with other members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia after spending time in Egyptian prisons. Became a popular speaker at forums where bin Laden was exposed to his teachings. Still lives in Mecca.
Sayyid Qutb: Islamist writer and educator who wrote Milestones, among many other important works. Nasser hanged him in 1966.
Burhanuddin Rabbani: Islamic scholar who served as president of Afghanistan from 1992 until 1996, when the Taliban took over. He briefly seized office again after the Taliban were deposed, but handed over power to Hamid Karzai’s interim government in December 2001. He now serves as an elected representative in Afghanistan’s parliament.
Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman: The “blind sheikh” who led the Islamic Group in Egypt and was the spiritual leader of al-Jihad. Imprisoned with Zawahiri and other Egyptian militants following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Eventually convicted of plotting to destroy New York City landmarks, he is now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
Ahmed Ressam: Algerian who trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan; captured in December 1999 as he tried to enter the United States from Canada carrying a load of explosives in his trunk. His evident goal was to blow up the Los Angeles airport.
Mark Rossini: Former actor from Queens who became a private detective before joining the FBI. Assigned to the I-49 squad, he replaced Dan Coleman at Alec Station. He is now the special assistant to the assistant director, office of public affairs, at FBI headquarters.
Amal al-Sada: Osama bin Laden’s fifth wife. They married in 2001 when she was fifteen. They are thought to have one child together. She is living with her family in Yemen.
Anwar al-Sadat: Former