CAIRO (AFP) - The United States has destroyed the al-Qaeda terror network as an Islamic militant group but its leaders can still spur "angry young people" into staging attacks worldwide, an Egyptian lawyer said.
"The Americans persist in saying al-Qaeda is still around to justify their so-called war on terrorism, but I think al-Qaeda is dead," said Islamist lawyer, Montasser el-Zayat, in an interview with AFP.
Zayat, who claims he has e-mail contact with the network's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said the group was destroyed during the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
"They no longer (have) the territory on which they were based, the (Taliban) government which supported them has been overthrown and the money they had in their hands has been frozen," said Zayat, speaking in his Cairo office.
"Zawahiri knows there are angry young people and he's trying to mobilize them," said Zayat, a former member of the underground Egyptian militant group Jamaa Islamiya.
"That's what happened in Yemen, Kuwait, Bali, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and that is what is going to happen in Egypt," he added, alluding to the bombings and attacks that have occurred in all these countries, except Egypt.
"In January, a group of young (Egyptians) wanted to launch an attack against the US embassy. Evidently, they had no organizational link with Zawahiri," he said.
In January, the Egyptian authorities arrested 43 people who the government daily Al-Ahram said belonged to the militant group Al-Jihad, which was led by Zawahiri.
The group was sent before the military prosecutor on charges of having "planned attacks against the American and Israeli embassies in Cairo."
Zayat suggested that Osama bin Laden made recent tapes attributed to the al-Qaeda leader "to reassure his friends and supporters that he is still present" amid rumors about his fate.
In two "messages", broadcast Saturday by Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden threatens the United States and its allies with new attacks, denouncing their deepening presence in Iraq.
Zayat, who was imprisoned between 1981 and 1984 for belonging to Jamaa Islamiya, said that the Egyptian government is "playing cat and mouse" with the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, whose members are often arrested.
The Brotherhood, which wants to create an Islamic government without resorting to violence, "are the real competitors" to President Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party, he said.
"In spite of the repression, it is impossible to eradicate the Islamist movement," he added.
Zayat also admitted to having played an intermediary role between Jamaa and the government, when the group called a halt in 1998 to a wave of violence which claimed around 1,300 lives in the 1990s.
"No comment," he replied, when asked if he continued to play such a role.