zanzibar: Many pictures of him can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...
<He was Arab Champion 1996 , and was a great attacker, and played most openings . He passed away after infected by Malaria on 27 October 2003, after playing in African Games - Abuja - Nigeria>
(The above site refers back to this page as well)
My preference would be to have his name spelled as <Essam> with two s's to match the above site, if this is the same player (which it must be).
Of course, the transliteration of Arabic into English allows for both - but I'd use the above site, which has the most information on the player, to decide (since it likely would reflect the player's preference).
Interesting that his FIDE card is still active, even though he's deceased. The FIDE card uses the name Esam (with one "s").
Nigel Short, in his 2003-11-16 Telegraph article with notice of his death, uses the name <Esam Aly Ahmed> with one "s" as well.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...
Mark Weeks goes on to discuss some of the difficulties of tracking this player due to the various translation spellings, here:
http://worldchesschampionship.blogs...