Update: The New Yorker profiled al-Zawahri in September, 2002--it is available here [thanks to the commenter who pointed this out.]

The media is calling Ayman al-Zawahri the brains behind Osama bin Laden. Who is he? Here's a profile from Al Jazeera:

Decades ago he gave up the affluent life of a Cairo doctor to dedicate himself to the Islamist underground, a choice that would eventually take him, like bin Ladin, to the mountains of Afghanistan. In December 2001 his wife and several children were reported to have been blown to pieces by American bombing in Afghanistan, but the bespectacled al-Qaida leader managed to escape the US dragnet and went on the run.

Born in 1951, Zawahri espoused his cause from an early age. In the 1960s he joined Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's oldest Islamist group. He was tried, along with many others, for links to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He served a three-year jail term for illegal arms possession but was acquitted of the main charges. In 1985, Zawahri left Egypt for Pakistan, where he worked as a doctor treating fighters wounded in battles against Soviet forces occupying neighbouring Afghanistan.

He took over in 1993 the leadership of Jihad, Egypt's second largest Islamic armed group. A military court in Egypt sentenced Zawahri to death in absentia in 1999 for militant activities. Zawahri joined forces with bin Ladin in 1998. He has been indicted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.