Al-Masri was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad alongside Ayman al-Zawahiri and fled the country in the mid-1980s along with many other Islamic militants. He joined the mujahideen in the Bosnian War (1992–1995).[6] He was sentenced to death in Egypt, in absentia, in 1998, in the case of the Returnees from Albania, for allegedly being responsible of a series of terror attacks in Egyptian towns during the 1990s.[7]