U.S. Copts Association

 By   Ahmed el-Khatib   

Sheikh Sayyed Imam, mufti and founder of al-Jihad organization in Egypt, has finished writing his new revisions. They come in response to the criticism leveled by the armed wing of this group abroad at his first revisions, which he wrote last year and dropped a bombshell worldwide.

Al-Masry Al-Youm will publish this new book by installments starting from next Tuesday, one year after al-Jihad’s revisions and on the eleventh anniversary of the famous massacre in Luxor.

That was the last armed action led by al-Jamaa al-Islamiya [Islamic Group]. Following that act, the group officially announced its famous initiative to renounce violence and then started reviewing its own doctrine.

As a result of these revisions, 16,000 members were released from detention camps and prisons in what was the largest reconciliation between the state and Islamic groups.

In his new revisions, Imam drops several bombshells and reveals many secrets regarding al-Jihad’s operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and some Arab and European countries, in addition to the operations carried out by jihadist groups inside and outside Egypt.

This is the first story and confession of one of al-Jihad’s most important leaders.

He also reveals some secrets concerning the historic dispute between him and the organization’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who allied himself with al-Qaeda before announcing the end of armed operations in Egypt in the mid-1990s.

The publication of Sayyed Imam’s revisions last year led to the liberation of some 3,000 prisoners belonging to al-Jihad’s groups. Some of them had been in prison for some 28 years, since al-Jihad was involved in the assassination of President Sadat in 1981.