Osama bin Laden
:
This article is about Osama bin Laden.
For the Saudi Family, see Bin Laden family.
Usāmah bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Lādin (; born
March 10,
1957 ), most commonly known as
Osama bin Laden or
Usama bin Laden (أسامة بن لادن) is an
Islamic fundamentalist militant, an alleged primary founder of the
al-Qaeda Islamist organization, and a member of the immensely wealthy
bin Laden family.
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda are alleged to have carried out a number of terrorist and guerrilla attacks worldwide including "9/11", that is the
September 11, 2001, attacks on the
World Trade Center in
New York City,
The Pentagon in
Arlington, Virginia, and the hijacking of
United Airlines Flight 93, which together killed at least 2,986 people total and caused the collapse of both
World Trade Center towers as well as
World Trade Center 7. In addition, they have been linked to the
1998 U.S. embassy bombings in
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania and
Nairobi,
Kenya, the
USS Cole bombing, the
Bali nightclub bombings, the
Madrid bombings, as well as
bombings in the
Jordanian capital of
Amman and in
Egypt's
Sinai peninsula.
According to the 1998
fatwa cosigned by Osama bin Laden, his main grievances against the
West, and especially the
United States, include their support for
Israel, their support for several
secular dictatorships in the
Middle East, and the presence of United States military bases in
Saudi Arabia. The
U.S. withdrew from these bases in 2003, stating that they were no longer necessary for their
campaign in Iraq.
On
June 7,
1999, bin Laden became the
456th person listed on the United States
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, following his indictment along with others for
capital crimes in the 1998 embassy attacks. Years later, on
October 10,
2001, bin Laden topped the initial list of the FBI's top 22
Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by the
President of the United States George W. Bush, in direct response to the attacks of 9/11, but which was again based on the indictment for the 1998 embassy attack. Bin Laden was among a group of thirteen fugitive terrorists wanted on that list for questioning about the 1998 embassy bombings. Bin Laden has not been formally indicted, and evidence has not been mentioned that he was involved, in the United States
criminal justice system for the September 11, 2001 attacks; he is officially still only a suspect in 'other terrorist attacks throughout the world'. Bin Laden remains the only fugitive ever to be listed on both FBI fugitive lists.
The
United States Department of State, through the
Rewards For Justice Program, is offering a reward of 25 million
US dollars for information leading to the capture or conviction of bin Laden. An additional reward of $2 million is being offered by the
Air Line Pilots Association and the
Air Transport Association.
Family and childhood
Osama bin Laden was born in
Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia. In a 1998 interview, later televised on
Al Jazeera, he gave his birth date as
March 10,
1957. His father was the late
Muhammed Awad bin Laden, a wealthy businessman involved in construction and with close ties to the
Saudi royal family. Before
World War I, Muhammed, originally poor and uneducated, emigrated from
Hadhramaut, on the south coast of
Yemen, to the
Red Sea port of
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he began to work as a porter. Starting his own business in 1930, Muhammed built his fortune as a building contractor for the
Saudi royal family during the 1950s.
There is no definitive account of the number of children born to Muhammed bin Laden, but the number is generally put at 54. In addition, various accounts place Osama as his seventeenth son. Muhammed bin Laden was married 22 times, although to no more than four women at a time per
Sharia law. Osama was born the only son of Muhammed bin Laden's tenth wife,
Hamida al-Attas, nee
Alia Ghanem, who had been born in
Syria.
al-Attas stepfamily in Jeddah
Osama's parents divorced soon after he was born, according to
Khaled M. Batarfi, a senior editor at the
Al Madina newspaper in Jeddah who knew Osama during the 1970s. Osama's mother then married a man named
Muhammad al-Attas, who worked at the bin Laden company. The couple had four children, and Osama lived in the new household with three half brothers and one half sister from the mother's side.
[Letter From Jedda, Young Osama, How he learned radicalism, and may have seen America, by Steve Coll, The New Yorker Fact, Issue of 2005-12-12, Posted 2005-12-05]Bin laden was raised as a devout
Sunni Muslim. But from 1968 to 1976, he attended the relatively secular
Al-Thager Model School, the most prestigious high school in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, called
"the school of the élite."
[[quote from Saleha Abedin, a longtime Jeddah educator, now a vice-dean of Jeddah's Dar Al-Hekma College, a private women's college], The New Yorker Fact, Issue of 2005-12-12] However, during the 1960s,
King Faisal had welcomed exiled teachers from
Syria,
Egypt, and
Jordan, so that around 1971 or 1972, at Saudi high schools and universities, it was common to find many of whom had become involved with dissident members of the
Muslim Brotherhood. During that time, bin Laden was exposed to those educators' banned political teachings during after-school Islamic study groups.
A Saudi Al Thagher biology teacher named
Ahmed Badeeb later became chief of staff in the 1980s for Prince
Turki al-Faisal, who was then the head of Saudi intelligence which sent hundreds of millions of dollars to support the Afghan war effort against the Soviets. Badeeb worked occasionally with bin Laden on the Afghan frontier, and has said that they enjoyed a warm personal relationship, with its origins in their shared experiences at Al Thagher.
As a college student at
King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, bin Laden studied
civil engineering and
business administration. He earned a
degree in civil engineering in 1979 and also one in
economics and
public administration, in 1981.
At the university, bin Laden was influenced by several professors with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Among them was
Muhammad Qutb, an Egyptian, whose brother, the late
Sayyid Qutb, had written one of the Brotherhood's most important tracts about anti-Western jihad,
"Signposts on the Road." The university at Jeddah is also where bin Laden met Dr.
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. Azzam was a teacher there while bin Laden was in attendance, and he would later play a crucial role working with bin Laden in the Afghanistan resistance against the Soviets.
There are reports that in the early 1970s, bin Laden traveled with his family to the West, including to
Oxford and to
Sweden. The authenticity of these reports is in question
[The New Yorker Fact, Issue of 2005-12-12], with some saying he rarely, if ever, left the Middle East.
Married life in Jeddah
In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married his first wife,
Najwa Ghanem, his mother's niece, and a first cousin, who was from Syria. The marriage ceremony took place in Najwa's native land, at
Latakia, in northwestern Syria.
[The Real bin Laden, an Oral History, pg. 2 of 9, VanityFair.com] After the birth of his first son, Abdallah, they moved from his mother's house to a building in the Al-Aziziyah district of Jeddah.
Although Bin Laden reportedly married four other women, he
divorced one,
Umm Ali bin Laden (i.e., the mother of Ali), a university lecturer, who studied in Saudi Arabia, and spent holidays in Khartoum, Sudan, where Osama later settled during his exile in the years 1991 to 1996. According to
Wisal al Turabi, the wife of Sudan's ruler Hassan Turabi, Umm Ali taught Islam to some families in Riyadh, an upscale neighborhood in Khartoum. The three latter wives of Osama bin Laden were all university lecturers, highly educated, and from distinguished families. According to Wisal al Turabi, he married the other three because they were "spinsters," who "were going to go without marrying in this world. So he married them for the Word of God." According to
Abu Jandal, bin Laden's former chief bodyguard, Osama's wife Umm Ali asked Osama for a divorce when they still lived in Sudan, because she said that she "could not continue to live in an austere way and in hardship."
[The Real bin Laden, an Oral History, pg. 2 of 9, VanityFair.com]Kola Boof affair in 1996
A
Sudanese-American minor author,
Kola Boof, claims she was kept against her will as a
mistress for bin Laden during four months in 1996, in
Marrakech,
Morocco. Boof first denied the relationship, then later admitted to it, but claimed that it was after he initially raped her, then kept her a virtual prisoner. Later, in attempting to dispel skeptics' claims that the story was a hoax, Boof and her publicists noted that the bin Laden relationship event was backed up by Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli, an Italian who grew up in
Tangiers, and who is owner of La Maison Arabe luxury hotel, which he refurbished over two years,
[The Suite Life, La Maison Arabe, Marrakech, Morocco, By Kate Crawford February 2003] and where bin Laden reputedly kept Boof in Marrakech. They also claim that
FOX News fact-checked and verified the story. On
August 23,
2003, Kola Boof appeared in an interview on the FOX News program "Big Story Weekend with
Rita Cosby". More recently, Boof and her publicists claim to want to downplay the 1996 relationship.
The purported relationship with Boof first became public in October 2002, when it was revealed in the Spanish press by "a female columnist," who was later identified as a former roommate of Boof's, named Lourdes Harris.
['Anti-Islam' books spark fatwa, WorldNetDaily, Posted: November 9, 2002] On
October 24,
2002, the "Matthew Norman Diary" column item in the
London newspaper
The Guardian then quoted Kola Boof giving a response to the Spanish press reports: "A female columnist in Spain is telling people that I dated/had an affair with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s," she began. "That's bullshit. I hate to admit I met him, because it's akin to saying you know Hitler, but I barely knew Bin Laden from 1996-98. When we met in Marrakesh in 1996, I was a starlet and he was trying to screw every female in town."
[Matthew Norman's Diary, The Guardian Unlimited, October 24, 2002] Later that month,
The New York Times wrote an article about Boof, for which she declined to cooperate, because of the perceived negative angle. In her 2006 autobiography (as excerpted in the August 2006 issue of
Harper's), Boof describes bin Laden as obsessed with
Whitney Houston, smoking lots of
marijuana, and forcing her to dance naked to
Van Halen.
Nadeem Quttub, a former diplomat of the Sudanese government who helped bin Laden build roads in Sudan, told the
BBC that Kola Boof was with Bin Laden "willingly" and miscarried their child in May 1996.
Peter Bergen, a biographer of Bin Laden, has called Boof "delusional". He says that Osama Bin Laden was never in Morocco in 1996 - in fact, he says that Bin Laden has never been to Morocco at all. (http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/16/152128/228#comment-84099)
Children
Bin Laden has fathered at least 24 children. His wife, Najwa reportedly had 11 children by bin Laden, including Abdallah (born c. 1976), Omar,
Saad and Muhammad. Muhammad bin Laden (born c. 1983) married the daughter of the late al-Qaeda leader
Mohammed Atef in January 2001, at
Kandahar, Afghanistan. Omar and Abdallah reportedly organized the U.S. branch of the World Congress of Muslim Youth in
Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s. Abdallah runs his own firm, called Fame Advertising, which has offices near a Starbucks in a two-story strip mall on the busy Palestine Street, in Jeddah.
In 1994
bin Laden's family publicly disowned him, shortly before the
Saudi Arabian government revoked his
citizenship for anti-government activity. He attended his son's wedding in January 2001, but since September 11, he is believed only to have had contact with his mother on one occasion.
.
Bin Laden is often described as lanky; the
FBI describes him as tall and thin, being 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) to 6 ft 5 in (195 cm) tall and weighing about 160 pounds (75 kg). He has an olive complexion, is left-handed, and usually walks with a
cane. He wears a plain white
turban and no longer dons the traditional Saudi male headdress
.
In terms of personality, Bin Laden is described as a soft-spoken, mild mannered man,
; and despite his rhetoric, he is said to be charming, polite, and respectful.
It is rumored that he suffers from various medical conditions including
kidney disease, some requiring him to have access to advanced medical facilities.
Usage variations of Osama's name
Osama's name is
transliterated in many ways.
Osama bin Laden is used by most
English-language mass media. The
FBI and
Fox News use
Usama bin Laden, which is often abbreviated to
UBL. Less common renderings include
Ussamah Bin Ladin and
Oussama Ben Laden (
French-language mass media). The latter part of the name can also be found as
Binladen or
Binladin.
Strictly speaking, under
Arabic linguistic conventions, it is incorrect to use "bin Laden" in a similar manner as a Western surname. His full name means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of 'Awad, son of Laden". However, the bin Laden family (or "Binladin," as they prefer to be known) generally use the name as a surname in the Western style. Although Arabic conventions dictate that he be referred to as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden", using "bin Laden" is in accordance with the family's own usage of the name and is the near-universal convention in Western references to him.
Bin Laden also has several commonly used
aliases and
nicknames, including
the Prince,
Al-Amir,
Abu Abdallah,
Sheikh Al-Mujahid the Director and
Samaritan...
1979 was a pivotal year for Islamic fundamentalism, with three huge events in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was connected, at least indirectly, to the latter two of them. First, on
January 16,
1979 the
Iranian Revolution began with the forced exile of the
Shah,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which then brought about the world's first modern Muslim
theocracy under the rule of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Second, a half-brother of Osama was implicated in the
November 20,
1979 Grand Mosque Seizure at
Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam. The hostage-taking, two week siege, and bloody ending shocked the Muslim world, as hundreds were killed in the ensuing battles and executions. The event was explained as a fundamentalist dissident revolt against the Saudi regime. The
Iran hostage crisis had begun only weeks earlier, on
November 4,
1979 when a mob of students stormed and seized the U.S. embassy. Immediately following the Mecca event, Iran blamed the U.S., and angry Islamic mobs then burned two more U.S. embassies to the ground, in
Islamabad, Pakistan, and at
Tripoli, Libya. And then in the third major event of the year, on
December 25,
1979 the
Soviet Union, attempting to suppress an Islamic rebellion, deployed the 40th Army into Afghanistan, in support of advisors it already had in place there.
Afghan Jihad resisting the Soviet invasion
Bin Laden's wealth and connections assisted his interest in supporting the
mujahideen, Muslim
guerrillas fighting the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan following the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. By 1980, his old teacher from the university in Jeddah, Abdullah Azzam, had relocated to
Peshawar, a major border city of a million people in the
North-West Frontier Province of
Pakistan. From there, Azzam was able to organize resistance directly on the Afghan frontier. Peshawar is only 15 km east of the historic
Khyber Pass, through the
Safed Koh mountains, connected to the southeastern edge of the
Hindu Kush range. This route became the major avenue of inserting foreign fighters and material support into eastern
Afghanistan for the resistance against the Soviets, and also in later years.
After bin Laden graduated from the university in Jeddah in 1980, he also came to live for a time in Peshawar, according to Rahimullah Yusufzai, executive editor of the English-language daily
The News International in 2001. "Azam prevailed on him to come and use his money" for training recruits, reported Yusufzai.
[Rahimullah Yusufzai, executive editor of the English-language daily The News International, in a statement to Reuters in Peshawar on December 29, 2001. Yusufzai met bin Laden twice in Afghanistan in 1998.] In the early 1980s, bin Laden lived at several addresses in and around Arbab Road, a narrow street in the
University Town neighbourhood in western Peshawar, Yusufzai said. Nearby in Gulshan Iqbal Road is the Arab mosque that Abdullah Azzam used as the jihad center, according to a
Reuters inquiry in the neighborhood. Years later, in 1989, Azzam was blown up in a massive car bombing outside the mosque. Bin Laden is thought to be a suspect in that assassination, because of a rift in the direction of the jihad at that time.
By 1984, with Azzam, bin Laden had established an organization named
Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK,
Office of Order in English), which funneled money, arms and Muslim fighters from around the world into the Afghan war. Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's inherited family fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, dealt with paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihad fighters. In running al-Khadamat, bin Laden set up a network of couriers travelling between Afghanistan and Peshawar, which continued to remain active after 2001, according to Yusufzai.
(
See: the History of Afghanistan).
Some have said that MAK was supported by the governments of
Pakistan, the
United States and Saudi Arabia, and that the three countries channeled their supplies through Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This account is vehemently denied by the U.S. government, which maintains that U.S. aid went only to Afghan fighters, and that
Afghan Arabs had their own sources of funding, an account also supported by Al Qaeda itself
.
Robin Cook, former leader of the
British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, wrote in
The Guardian on Friday,
July 8, 2005, }}
For a while Osama worked at the Services Office working with Abdallah Azzam on Jihad Magazine, a magazine that gave information about the war with the soviets and interviewed mujahideen. As time passed, Aymen Al Zawahiri encouraged Osama to split away from Abdallah Azzam. Osama formed his own army of mujahideen and fought the soviets. One of his most significant battles was the battle of Jaji, which was not a major fight, but it earned him a reputation as a fighter.
Formation of al-Qaeda
By 1988, bin Laden had split from the MAK based on strategic differences. While Azzam and his MAK organization acted as support for the Afghan fighters and provided relief to refugees and injured, bin Laden wanted a more military role in which the Arab fighters would not only be trained and equipped by the organization but also be commanded on the battlefield by Arabic. One of the main points leading to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was the insistence of Azzam that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming their separate fighting force.
After
Iraq invaded
Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered to help defend Saudi Arabia (with 12,000 armed men) but was rebuffed by the Saudi government. Bin Laden publicly denounced his government's dependence on the U.S. military and demanded an end to the presence of foreign military bases in the country. According to reports (by the BBC and others), the 1990/91 deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in connection with the
Gulf War profoundly shocked and revolted bin Laden and other Islamist militants because the Saudi government claims legitimacy based on their role as guardians of the sacred Muslim cities of
Mecca and
Medina. After the Gulf War cease-fire agreement left
Saddam Hussein remaining in power in Iraq, the ongoing presence of long-term bases for non-Muslim U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia continued to undermine the Saudi rulers' perceived legitimacy and inflamed anti-government Islamist militants, including bin Laden. Bin Laden's increasingly strident criticisms of the Saudi monarchy led the government to expel him to
Sudan in 1991. Bin Laden was accepted in Sudan by the ruling
National Islamic Front (NIF), which may have hoped he could aid them through his wealth and construction company.
Assisted by donations funneled through business and charitable fronts such as
Benevolence International, established by his brother-in-law,
Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden established a new base for mujahideen operations in
Khartoum, Sudan to disseminate Islamist philosophy and recruit operatives in
Southeast Asia,
Africa,
Europe, and the
United States. Bin Laden also invested in business ventures, such as al-Hajira, a construction company that built roads throughout Sudan, and Wadi al-Aqiq, an agricultural corporation that farmed hundreds of thousands of acres of
sorghum,
gum Arabic,
sesame and
sunflowers in Sudan's central
Gezira province. Bin Laden's operations in Sudan were protected by the powerful Sudanese NIF government figure
Hassan al Turabi. While in Sudan, bin Laden married one of Turabi's nieces.
The funding from bin Laden's Sudan ventures was used to run several training camps on his farmland, where Islamist militants received, from former Afghan mujahideen, instruction in firearms use and the use of explosives .
Around this time, bin Laden and his associates began developing and executing a series of meticulously-planned terrorist attacks. In 1995, the Saudi Arabian government stripped bin Laden of his citizenship after he claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. and Saudi military bases in
Riyadh and
Dahran.
[[Image:AQ00105.jpg|thumb|right|200 px|Group photo of Ayman Al Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden & {{Abu Hafs}}. Prosecution exhibit from the trial of {{Zacarias Moussaoui}}.]]
Refuge in Afghanistan
Sudanese officials, whose government was under international sanctions offered to extradite bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s. However, Saudi Arabia refused because of the political difficulties of accepting such a controversial figure into their custody. Consequently, in May 1996, under increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia,
Egypt and the United States, Sudan expelled bin Laden to Afghanistan. He chartered a plane and flew to
Kabul before settling in Jalalabad after being invited by leading Afghan Mujaheddin figure,
Abdul Rasuul Sayyaf. After spending a few months in the border region hosted by local leaders, bin Laden forged a close relationship with some of the leaders of Afghanistan's new
Taliban government, notably Mullah
Mohammed Omar. Bin Laden supported the Taliban government with financial and paramilitary assistance and, in 1997, he moved to
Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold.
Bin Laden is suspected of funding the
November 1997 Luxor massacre, Egypt conducted by Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an Egyptian militant Islamist group. The Egyptian government convicted bin Laden's colleague, one of the leaders of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Dr.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, and
sentenced him to death in absentia for the massacre.
Attacks on United States targets
Bin Laden's first strike against United States citizens was the
December 29,
1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in
Aden,
Yemen, which killed a Yemeni hotel employee and an Austrian national and seriously injured the Austrian's wife. About 100 U.S. soldiers, part of
Operation Restore Hope, had been staying at the hotel for two weeks but had left two days earlier for
Somalia. U.S. investigations have allegedly established financial and logistical links between bin Laden and
Ramzi Yousef, prime suspect of the February 1993
World Trade Center bombing.Bin Laden is also connected to the 1993
Battle of Mogadishu that killed 18 U.S. troops in Somalia and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar military complex in Saudi Arabia that left 21 U.S. soldiers dead.
It is widely believed that Al-Qaeda was responsible for plots in Asia orchestrated by Ramzi Yousef, who was later arrested in Pakistan, brought to the United States and convicted in November 1997 for masterminding the World Trade Center bombing. The plots in Asia, including those to assassinate the Pope, during his late 1994 visit to the Philippines, and President Clinton, during his visit there in early 1995, all failed; also included among the plots were those to bomb the US and Israeli embassies in
Manila in late 1994 and to bomb US flights across the
Pacific in 1995. Bin Laden and the
Indonesian militant, known as
Hambali, allegedly funded, then aborted the
Operation Bojinka conspiracy when police discovered the plot in
Manila,
Philippines, on
January 6,
1995.
In 1998, bin Laden and
Ayman al-Zawahiri, (a leader of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad), co-signed a
fatwa (binding religious edict) in the name of the
World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, declaring:}}
The September 11, 2001 Attacks
Immediately after the
September 11, 2001 attacks in the
United States, most
U.S. government officials named bin Laden and the
al-Qaeda organization as the prime
suspect. However, bin Laden allegedly denied direct responsibility for the attacks, and in an interview for the Karachi-based Pakistani daily newspaper
Ummat, published on
September 28,
2001, he stated:}}
On
December 13,
2001, the
United States State Department released a
videotape apparently showing bin Laden speaking with a small group of associates somewhere in Afghanistan before the
U.S. invasion removed the Taliban regime from power. The State Department claims that the tape is authentic and was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan during a raid on a house in
Jalalabad.
Although its authenticity has been questioned by some viewers, especially those critical of U.S. policy,
the tape appears to implicate bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks and was aired on many
television channels all over the world, with an accompanying
English translation provided by the
United States Defense Department. In this translation, bin Laden appears to display knowledge of the timing of the actual attack a few days in advance and mentions asking each of the attackers "to go America" for a "martyrdom operation."
In a closed door session in October 2001, the United States presented evidence to
NATO of bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 attacks.
NATO's general secretary,
George Robertson, described the evidence as "clear and compelling," based upon phone records and bank records involving al Qaeda members,
leading the organization to invoke, for the first time in its history,
Article 5 in the NATO pact.
Article 5 states that any attack on a member state is considered an attack against the entire alliance. The evidence presented to NATO was never made available to the public.
In 2004, however, the
U.S. government commission investigating the September 11 attacks officially concluded that the attacks were conceived and implemented by al-Qaida operatives.
However, again, no hard evidence was presented of bin Laden's involvement. The issue of funding was specifically excluded from consideration by the commission. The consensus view within the United States remains that al-Qaeda was
responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Based on a
Reuters article,
Al-Jazeera reported that a website audiotape purportedly of bin Laden claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. The speaker claimed he knew that
Zacarias Moussaoui was not part of the 9/11 conspiracy because he personally gave the assignments to the attackers.
The U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has bin Laden listed as one of their 'most wanted' persons in connection with the simultaneous
1998 U.S. embassy bombings in
Tanzania and
Kenya; his
wanted poster is
here. However, the FBI does not list 9/11 as one of the crimes for which bin Laden is wanted by the FBI; the wanted poster only lists the 1998 embassy bombings.
According to the
Washington Post, five Americans and two Indians were killed in the
13 November 1995 truck bombing of a US-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh. Bin Laden denied involvement but praised the attack.
In August,
1996, a
grand jury investigation against bin Laden began in New York. On
June 8,
1998 they issued a sealed indictment, charging him with "conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States." Prosecutors further charged that bin Laden is the head of the terrorist organization called al Qaeda, and that he was a major financial backer of Islamic terrorists worldwide.
On August 7, 1998 two simultaneous explosions occurred at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The bomb in Nairobi, Kenya killed 213 people, including 12 US nationals, and injured more than 4,500 . The bomb in Dar es Salaam killed 11 and injures 85. No Americans died in the Tanzania bombing [
1].
In response to the
1998 United States embassy bombings following the fatwa, President
Bill Clinton ordered a freeze on assets linked to bin Laden. Clinton also signed an
executive order, authorizing bin Laden's arrest or
assassination. In August 1998, the U.S. launched an attack using
cruise missiles. The attack failed to harm bin Laden but killed 19 other people.
On
November 4,
1998, after the embassy bombings in Africa,
Osama Bin Laden and several Al Qaeda members were indicted in U.S. criminal court [
2].Osama bin Laden was indicted by a Federal
Grand Jury in the
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on charges of Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, and Attacks on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death. The U.S. offered a US $5 million reward for information leading to bin Laden's apprehension or conviction.
The Taliban protected Osama bin laden from extradition requests by the U.S. variably claiming that Bin Laden had "gone missing" in Afghanistan [
3] or that Washington "cannot provide any evidence or any proof" that bin Laden is involved in terrorist activities and that "Without any evidence, bin Laden is a man without sin... he is a free man" [
4]. Evidence against Bin Laden included courtroom testimony and satellite phone records [
5][
6].
In 1999, U.S. President
Bill Clinton convinced the
United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.
According to rumors reported in the Pakistani press, Bin Laden died in December 2001 of
pulmonary complications secondary to catastrophic
kidney failure [
7], in the absence of available hygienic
dialysis. His death was speculated on by the
Pakistani president
Pervez Musharraf [
8] and by President
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan [
9].
The Egyptian opposition party newspaper
al-Wafd published an article on December 26, 2001, describing bin Laden's supposed funeral. In it, the paper states that bin Laden had died of "serious complications in the lungs" on December 16, citing an unnamed
Taliban official's comments to
The Observer of Pakistan.
Claims of
sightings of Osama bin Laden have been made since December 2001, however these sources are typically not verifiable, and have at times placed Osama in different locations during overlapping time periods.
Osama Bin Laden is often stated to be residing within fortified caves in the rugged
Tora Bora region that straddles the border between
Pakistan and
Afganistan. The latest reported claim regarding his location occurred on
May 24,
2006, when ABC News reported about rumors that Bin Laden was sighted in the
Kumrat Valley in the
Kohistan District of Pakistan. [
10]. The region is 40 miles east of the Afghan–Pakistani border.
On July 3, 2006, it was reported that late 2005 the CIA closed a unit called
Alec Station dedicated to the search for and capture of Osama Bin Laden. According to the
New York Times,
Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit, said the move reflected a view within the agency that "Mr. Bin Laden" was no longer the threat he once was. [
11]
Video and audiotapes from Osama bin Laden:
*
The Videos of Osama bin Laden*
The 2004 Osama bin Laden tape*
The 2006 Osama bin Laden tapesSome commentators have alleged inconsistent appearance / audio signatures of Osama Bin Laden in these tapes.
*According to the recent book, "
The Looming Tower" by
Lawrence Wright, bin Laden was a fan of the American TV show
Bonanza as a child.
*He may be portrayed in a fictitious role in the upcoming
2007 movie
Rambo IV. While director
Sylvester Stallone's original idea for the movie involved a hunt for bin Laden, recent reports indicate that the screenplay currently revolves around other characters from the series.
*
9/11 Commission*
1998 United States embassy bombings* 2000
USS Cole bombing*
2002 Bali bombing* 2004
Madrid train bombings*
al-Qaeda*
Ayman al-Zawahiri*
bin Laden family*
Clearstream scandal (Bin Laden's
Bahrain International Bank used this
clearing house for its financial activities)
*
FBI Most Wanted Terrorists*
Ladenese epistle*
Islamic fundamentalism*
Islamist terrorism*
Islamofascism*
2005 London Bombings*
2006 Mumbai Bombings*
Mujahideen*
Saleh Abdullah Kamel*
September 11, 2001 attacks*
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan*
Taliban Movement*
Worldwide perception of Osama bin Laden*
Reward for Osama's Capture*
Identifying Misinformation US government denial of CIA connection
*
"Main Columns of the Osame Bin Laden Ideology"*
"Listening to Bin Laden" by Said Shirazi, an analysis of his collected speeches.
*
Osama Bin Laden Videos Conspiracy theory videos.
Profiles
*
FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives poster*
FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists poster *
BBC News: 'I met Osama bin Laden' -
March 26 2004 - a short profile of bin Laden's life
*
Interpol Profile*
Who Is Osama bin Laden? - By
Michel Chossudovsky*
New Yorker article on Osama's youthOther
*
"Main Columns of the Usame Bin Laden Ideology", Journal of Turkish Weekly*
Al Qaeda's Evolution, March 2006
*
Does Bin Laden still control Al Qaeda?, March 2006
*
About.com's Is Osama bin Laden Dead?*
ALL HEADLINE NEWS Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli confirms bin Laden lived at LaMaison Arabe with then-actress, Kola Boof.
*
BBC News News about a new audio recording of Osama on the BBC UK website. Thursday,
19 January 2006
*
CBC News video interview with Bruce Lawrence, editor of
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (2005, ISBN 1844670457) from
CBC News: The Hour,
November 21 2005
*
Fatwa from World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders - Statement from bin Laden,
23 February 1998
*
BBC:Transcript of Osama bin Laden video aired by al-Jazeera* Deborah Amos
"Interview: Osama Bin Laden: The World's Most Wanted Man" January 30, 2006
Council on Foreign Relations*
Bin Laden associate presumed dead - American Forces Press Service, BAGHDAD,
April 13 2006. Alleges a CIA/hri relationship
*
Osama bin Laden at the
Internet Movie Database*
Al-Watan al-'Arabi report from 1998 translated by Foreign Broadcast Information Service* Emerson, S. (2002),
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, Free Press; ISBN 0743233247.
* Coll, Steve (2004),
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10 2001, Penguin Press; ISBN 1594200076.
*
Randal, Jonathan. Osama: The Making of a Terrorist. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1845111176.
*
Guardian article about the difficulty of romanizing Arabic, i.e., Usama vs. Osama*
Robin Cook The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means The Guardian, July 8, 2005
