Bin Laden Cried Very Easily: Zawahiri

The new head of al-Qaeda gets gooey-eyed over his old boss in a video being circulated on jihadist websites. Ayman al-Zawahiri invites viewers to join him in reflection on Osama bin Laden's human side, recalling the dead al-Qaeda leader as "tender, gentle, kind, with refined feelings, even when life was hard," the BBC reports. "We never saw a man like him," says Zawahiri, who met bin Laden in the mid-1980s when both were fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

People "remember the lion of Islam threatening America and Bush, but people don't know that he was a very delicate, nice, shy man," says Zawahiri. "He was known for crying and tearing up very easily. He would tell me that certain brothers would tell him to try and hold them back a bit, and I told him that it was a blessing he had." Zawahiri, who took charge of al-Qaeda after bin Laden's death in May, is now America's most wanted terrorist, and officials have offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture. (More Ayman al-Zawahri stories.)