Ali Sadreddine Al-Bayanouni

Ali Sadreddine Al-Bayanouni is a Muslim Brotherhood leader in exile in London. He was born in 1938 in Aleppo and brought up in a religious Sunni Muslim family, where his father and grandfather were both well-known Muslim scholars. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood while in secondary school, in 1954, and went on to graduate with a law degree from the University of Damascus in 1963. He served as a reserve officer in the Syrian Army from 1959 to 1960. Bayanouni became a member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's Shura Council and Executive Office in 1972. Due to his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, Bayanouni was imprisoned from 1975 to 1977. After his time in prison, he emerged to become the deputy leader of the Brotherhood in 1977. He left Syria two years later and eventually settled in Jordan, where he remained for twenty years. He arrived in Britain as a political refugee in 2000, after the Jordanian authorities requested he leaves the country.