However.
Here is one instance in which torture achieved its intended purpose, but set in motion a chain of events eventually leading to the fall of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th, 2001.
What follows is a passage from The Road to Al Qaeda, written by Montasser al-Zayyat, an Egyptian human rights lawyer who is, to say the least, sympathetic to the Islamist cause. The book tells the story of Ayman al-Zawahiri, formerly of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and currently Osama bin Laden's deputy within Al Qaeda. Implicated in the 1979 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Zawahiri himself was convicted only of possessing a pistol and sentenced to three years in prison. He left Egypt soon after his release.
Al-Zayyat writes:
I visited him in the Ibn al-Nafees hospital, where he was working in Jeddah. He looked very sorrowful. The scars left on his body from indescribable torture he suffered caused him no more pain, but his heart still ached from it.Among other reasons, Zawahiri's shame at ratting on his friends precluded him from returning to Egypt. Further radicalized by his prison experiences, there Zarqawi met such like-minded individuals as ... Osama Bin Laden. Al-Zayyat explains a shift in Zawahiri's thinking from a focus on the "near enemy," the Egyptian government, to the "far enemy," Israel and the United States. Zayyat attributes the change to the Egyptian's government's successful campaign against Islamic Jihad, and a corresponding lack of funds that were needed to retain members and finance terrorist activities. Out of necessity as much as out of ideology, in 1998 Zawahiri merged Islamic Jihad with Bin Laden's organization to form the International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders, aka al Qaeda. The merger brought Zawahiri's jihadi ideology and expertise together with Bin Laden's ambition, money, political acumen, and rhetorical flair.
The torture he suffered was not proportionate to his comparatively minor role in the assassination of Sadat. The authorities were particularly harsh with him not because of his deeds, but because of his connections. They discovered after arresting him that he was in contact with a number of officers from the Egyptian Armed Forces. These included the martyr 'Esam al-Qamari, an Armed Forces officer. Qamari fled from the army when, in March 1981, the authorities discovered his Islamist orientations. Zawahiri was also incriminated by his links with Captian 'Abdel 'Azeez al-Gamal and First Lieutenant 'Awni 'Abdel Mageed. I met Gamal and 'Abdel Mageed only after the incident, during the proceedings of the Jihad case.
Despite all that he had suffered physically, what was really painful to Zawahiri was that, under the pain of torture, he was forced to testify against his fellow members in the case against 'Esam al-Qamari and other officers. Zawahiri was taken from the Tora prison to the Higher Military Court to give testimony against other jihadi members from the army. Under these conditions, he admitted that they formed a movement inside the army to topple the regime and institute an Islamic government.
After he was arrested on October 15, 1981, Zawahiri informed the authorities of Qamari's whereabouts. He had taken a refuge in a small mosque where he used to pray and meet Zawahiri and other members of the group. It was this painful memory which was at the root of Zawahiri's suffering, and which prompted him to leave Egypt for Saudi Arabia. He stayed there until he left for Afghanistan in 1987. During the three years following his arrival in Afghanistan, his leadership among jihadi Islamists became more prominent, as he worked to regroup the disoriented group members.
Not only did Zawahiri influence bin Laden, the latter impacted the philosophy of Zawahiri and of Islamic Jihad. For example, bin Laden adised Zawahiri to stop armed operations in Egypt and to ally with him against their common enemies: the United States and Israel. His advice to Zawahiri came upon their return to Afghanistan, when bin Laden ensured the safety of Zawahiri and the Islamic Jihad members under the banner of the Taliban, who at that time controlled 95 percent of the country.The rest, as they say, is history.
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