"The Long War Journal" reported that al Sawah joined the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1981. They reported that he was rounded up in the large round-up of Muslim Brotherhood members following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. "The Long War Journal" also reported that Al Sawah, was a very skilled bomb-maker, who had been trained by Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, the bomb-maker who developed the bomb used against the . They reported he had invented an early model of shoe-bomb in the summer of 2001 and that he developed new models of magnetic limpet-mines.