Montasser el-Zayat (IPA: [monˈtɑsˤeɾ el-, ez- zæjˈjæːt]) or Muntasir al-Zayyat (Arabic: منتصر الزيات Muntaṣir az-Zayyāt) is an Egyptian lawyer and author whose former clients, according to press reports, included Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya.[1] He has written a book entitled Ayman al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him,[2] which is strongly critical of al-Zawahiri. El-Zayat claims[3] that al-Zawahiri responded to his criticism by electronic mail. The Washington Post reported[3] that el-Zayat has said of al-Zawahiri, "He always thinks he is right, even if he is alone." El-Zayat also represented Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar in the 1999 case of the Returnees from Albania.
Following the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, el-Zayat was one of the hundreds of Egyptians who were rounded up,[4] and although he was not convicted, three years passed before he was released.
On 1 December 2002 the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported[4] that el-Zayat "accused the United States of 'invading the region and imposing its policies — it wants to interfere with our life, and it wants us to modify our religious curriculum. ... This is why the people approved of what happened in Kuwait, Yemen and Bali'".[4]
El-Zayat is currently the lawyer for the Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who was living in exile in Italy when he was allegedly abducted by the CIA's Special Activities Division under the direction of Robert Seldon Lady.[5]
In May 2009 Al Arabiya reported that el-Zayat had been invited to defend one of the fourteen high-value detainees, Mustafa Hosawi, before a Guantanamo military commission.[6] El-Zayat described suspecting, at first, that he was the target of a hoax.