Larry Ali, the founder of the Islamic Foundation of Western Arabia, was jailed in 1979, two years after Mohammed. He was tried for his role in the bombing, but the prosecution was unable to prove its case as the evidence was either not sufficiently strong or the testimony of the accused was questionable. In the end, the judge sentenced all three men to death.

Bin Laden died in 1996, but his influence continues to thrive. Today, Al-Qaeda is a major component of the Syrian civil war. It was on the right side of the Syrian-Jordanian border a few months ago, reportedly using its forces to protect Bashar al-Assad’s government. It was last seen fighting the Syrian government in the city of Aleppo.

There are a number of Al-Qaeda affiliates in the Middle East. Some of them have links to extremist Islamic clerics in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco. These connections explain why some of them, like Abu Mohammed Al-Adnani and the man who founded the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, are sometimes called the “second group in Syria.”

For a while, Al-Zawahiri, the emir of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, worked closely with the Syrian dictator. Now that he has taken over the organization, he seems to be more interested in building his own militia and more willing to take up arms against the U.S. than he was when he lived in Baghdad.

Al-Zawahiri may have wanted to remain in Iraq, but he would never have agreed to a division of responsibility among the four main groups in Syria. Al-Qaeda does not plan to return to Syria in the near future. That seems like the best case scenario for their survival.

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