In 1989, Ashoush participated in the Jihad in Afghanistan, where he became a close friend of Mohammed Atef, who would later become the military chief of Al Qaeda, and became acquainted with Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. In 1991 he returned to Egypt with a group of other Egyptians, founding the jihadi group Vanguards of Conquest, but was arrested in 1993 along with 150 of his followers and remained imprisoned until the revolution.[3]