Zarqawi, Abu Musab Al

1966 – He was born this year at the Jordanian city of Zarga amidst poverty and squalor.

1983 - At the age of 17 he was a street thug and dropped out from the school.

1980 – He was behind bars for drug possession and sexual assault as he was an active militant in Afghanistan during that time.

1989 – He traveled to Afghanistan to join the insurgency against the Soviet Union. As he was too late to join, he ended up as a reporter for an Islamist news letter.

1990 – There are reports that during this time, he took a trip to Europe and started a group, the al-Tawhid, a paramilitary committed to installing the Islamic regime in Jordan.

1992 – In 1992, he was arrested and was incarcerated in a Jordanian prison for conspiring to overthrow the monarchy to establish an Islamic caliphate. Even as a captive, he encouraged his cellmates to overthrow the rulers of Jordan.

1999 – When he was released from prison, Zarqawi was involved in an attempt to blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman as it was frequented by American and Israeli tourists. He then fled Jordan and traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. In Afghanistan, Zarqawi established a militant training camp in Herat. With the al-Qaeda's support, the camp opened and soon served as a magnet for Jordanian militants. The camp specialized in poisons and explosives. In the same year, he also formed the group Jund al-Sham with $200,000 seed money from Osama bin Laden.

2001 - In 2001, Zarqawi was arrested in Jordan but was soon released. He was later convicted in absentia and was sentenced to death for plotting the attack on the Radisson SAS Hotel.

2002 - He started his terrorist campaign by hiring men to kill Laurence Foley who was a senior U.S. diplomat working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jordan. On the 28th of October of this year, the diplomat was assisinated inside his home in Amman.

2004 – He was one of the most wanted individual. The price for his captivity was equal to what was offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden.

2006 – On the 7th of June, he was killed 1.5 miles north of Hibhib, near the city of Baguba, Iraq, by a United States air strike. He died from internal bleeding after the air strike since he sustained injuries from the bomb blast.