Al-Qaida No. 2 avoiding phone, Internet

WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has not used a telephone, e-mail or internet connection for more than 4 years, according to an associate.

Zawahiri fears that such communications could reveal his location, the associate said in a statement to the London-based international Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat, the paper reported Thursday.

The associate, Mohammad Hasan Khalil al-Hakim, also known as Abu Jihad al-Masri, is described by the FBI as al-Qaida's head of media and propaganda, and believed to be operating in Iran.

He contacted the paper to protest the innocence of a lawyer arrested this week in Cairo and charged by Egyptian state security prosecutors with being a key link in al-Qaida's global network.

Mamdouh Ismail is said by Egyptian authorities to be a liaison between al-Qaida's leaders, including Zawahri, and Islamic militants in Egypt, Yemen and Iraq.

"If the al-Qaida movement decided to operate in any country, it would not assign such task to any of the well-known Islamist leaders or those who had been arrested inside or outside Egypt," the paper quoted Hakim as saying in the statement. "These are the basic rules of our work."