(AKI) - The number two of al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri according to a report in Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat on Thursday, has not used the internet or a telephone of any sort since 2003 for fear of being traced. The leader of the Egyptian Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya, Muhammad Khalil Hasan al-Hakayma, told the paper that al-Zawahiri "has not used the Internet or a telephone, either mobile or fixed-line, for more than four years." "He does not use modern means of communications, neither telephones nor email for fear of being intercepted by Western secret services involved in the war against terrorism" said al-Hakayma.
Al-Hakayma had contacted the Arab newspaper to defend the Egyptian lawyer Mamdouh Ismayl, arrested by the Egyptian authorities on suspicion of financing the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The Egyptian judiciary last week asked for the arrest of Ismayl on charges he financed al-Qaeda in Egypt, Yemen and Algeria, on the indications of al-Zawahiri. "If al-Qaeda decides to receive funding from someone it does not use already known individuals for its contacts with Islamist extremists already arrested in the past" explained the Jamaa al-Islamiya.