Osama bin Laden

At 54 years old, Osama bin Laden has this physical status:

Osama bin Mohammed bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia and studied at university in the country until 1979, when he joined Mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

He aided in funding the Mujahideen by channeling arms, money, and troops from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and he has gained a following among Arabs.

He founded al-Qaeda in 1988.

He was banned from Saudi Arabia in 1992 and moved his base to Sudan until US pressure compelled him to leave Sudan in 1996.

He declared war against the US after establishing a new base in Afghanistan, prompting a string of bombings and similar attacks.

Bin Laden was one of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his role in the September 11 attacks, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people and prompted the US to launch the War on Terror.

He was later identified as the subject of a decade-long international manhunt.

Bin Laden was a major target of the United States from 2001 to 2011, as the FBI gave him a $25 million bounty in their hunt for him.

bin Laden was shot and killed by US Navy SEALs inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, where he lived with a local family from Waziristan on the orders of US President Barack Obama on May 2, 2011.

The al-Qaeda group was responsible for several other mass-casualty attacks around the world under his leadership.

Early life and education

Bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the son of Yemeni Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a billionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family and Mohammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Syrian Hamida al-Attas (then called Alia Ghanem) and Mohammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Mohammed bin Laden. Bin Laden's birthdate was listed as "10 March 1957" in a 1998 interview. Despite the fact that bin Laden was born in Riyadh, his birthplace was named Jeddah in the first FBI and Interpol records.

Hamida was divorced shortly after Osama bin Laden was born. Mohammed al-Attas, a co-worker of Mohammed al-Attas, was recommended to Hamida. In the late 1950s or early 1960s, Al-Attas married Hamida. bin Laden had four children at the time, and the new household had three half-brothers and one half-sister. Osama later acquired around $30 million in the bin Laden family's $5 billion in the building market, which Osama later inherited around $25-30 million.

Bin Laden was born as a devout Sunni Muslim. He attended the elite Al-Thager Model School from 1968 to 1976. At King Abdulaziz University, he concentrated on economics and business administration. According to some accounts, he obtained a degree in civil engineering in 1979 or a degree in public administration in 1981. Bin Laden took an English-language course in Oxford, England, in 1971. According to one, he was "hard working," and another said he left university after his third year without completing a college degree. Bin Laden's greatest passion at university was religion, where he was active in both "interpreting the Quran and jihad" and charitable work. Other writing interests included reading poetry and reading, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle's work, black stallions; and association football, in which he loved playing at centre forward and following the English club Arsenal.

Personal life

Bin Laden married Najwa Ghanem in 1974, but they were later divorced and she left Afghanistan on September 9, 2001. Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s); Khairiah Sabar (married 1985); and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). According to several websites, a sixth wife, whose name is unknown, was annulled soon after the wedding. Bin Laden and his wives raised between 20 and 26 children. Following the September 11 attacks, several of bin Laden's children escaped to Iran, and Iranian authorities have reportedly continued to monitor their movements.

In his book, Nasser al-Bahri, bin Laden's personal bodyguard, details bin Laden's personal life. He likes him as a frugal man and a strict father, who loved taking his large family on shooting trips and picnics in the desert.

Bin Laden's father, Mohammed, died in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot Jim Harrington misjudged a landing. Salem bin Laden, Bin Laden's younger half-brother, was killed in 1988 near San Antonio, Texas, when he mistakenly flew a plane into power lines.

Bin Laden's height and weight were misleading, according to FBI author Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning book on al-terrorism, he was mistakenly published, and he was actually "just over 6 foot (1.8 m) tall." He died at the age of 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in). Bin Laden had an olive skin and was left-handed, often walking with a cane. He wore a plain white keffiyeh. Bin Laden had stopped wearing the traditional Saudi male keffiyeh and instead wore the traditional Yemeni male keffiyeh. Bin Laden's demeanor was described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered.

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Militant and political career

Bin Laden left college in 1979 and joined Abdullah Azzam in Pakistan, where he aided the Mujahideen resistance in the Soviet-Afghan war. "I was outraged that an injustice had been committed against the people of Afghanistan," he later told a journalist. Through the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US (as part of CIA operations in Afghanistan, specifically Operation Cyclone), Saudi Arabia, and China delivered between $6 to tens of thousands of mujahideen from 1979 to 1992. "He did not get any direct funding or instruction from the United States during the 1980s," British journalist Jason Burke wrote. Nor did his followers. Both the Afghan mujahideen and the Pakistan's ISI intelligence service received a significant number of both. Some Arabs were defeated by the Soviets in battle, but not in a way that matters." Bin Laden, a three-star general in the Pakistani army and the head of the ISI department, met and developed contacts with Hamid Gul, who was a three-star general in the military and head of the ISI department. Although the US provided the funds and arms, militant groups' training was entirely carried out by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI. Bin Laden acted as a liaison between the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) and Afghan warlords beginning in 1980; no evidence of contact between the CIA and Bin Laden exists in the CIA archives; "While bin Laden may not have been a formal, salaried GIP agent," Steve Coll states, "it seems that bin Laden had a long association with Saudi intelligence." Bin Laden's first trainer was U.S. Special Forces Commando Ali Mohamed.

Bin Laden and Azzam founded Maktab al-Khidamat, which transported money, arms, and fighters from around the Arab world into Afghanistan in 1984. Bin Laden's inherited family fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, paid for paperwork with Pakistani authorities, and provided other similar facilities for the jihadi fighters in al-Khadamat. Bin Laden established camps inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, and mobilized volunteers from around the Muslim world to combat the Soviet-backed regime, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Bin Laden established a base in eastern Afghanistan for several dozen of his own Arab troops between 1986 and 1987. Bin Laden fought against the Soviets, such as the Battle of Jaji in 1987. Despite its insignificant strategic value, the conflict was lionized in the mainstream Arab press. Many Arabs idolize him at this time.

A massacre killed many hundreds of Iranians from within and around Gilgit, Pakistan, in May 1988. Whether responding to rumors of a Sunnis massacre by Shias, many thousands of Sunnis were killed in a massacre. Shia civilians were also raped.

The massacre is suspected by B. Raman, the founder of India's Research and Analysis Wing, of a resistance carried out by the Shias of Gilgit during the reign of military dictator Zia-ul Haq. He alleged that the Pakistan Army compelled Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province to Gilgit and the immediate areas to stop the rebellion.

Bin Laden had left Maktab al-Khidamat by 1988. Although Azzam responded to Afghan fighters, bin Laden wanted a more military role. Azzam's insistence that Arab fighters be integrated into the Afghan combat groups rather than forming a separate fighting force was one of the key factors leading to the break and the founding of al-Qaeda. According to notes from bin Laden's meeting on August 20, 1988, al-Qaeda was still a formal group, with the intention of lifting the word of God to make his faith victorious." Following are a list of membership requirements, sorted out are: listening skills, good manners, obedience, and making a promise (bayat) to follow one's leaders.

The group's real name was not used in public announcements, according to Wright, because its existence was still a little-known mystery. According to his study, al-Qaeda emerged at an al-reignation conference held in Abu Dhabi on August 8, 1988, where it was agreed to join bin Laden's fund with the Islamic Jihad group's expertise and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets departed from Afghanistan.

Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia as a hero of jihad. He was thought to have taken down the Soviet Union's mighty superpower, as well as his Arab legion. Bin Laden, a Saudi monarchy heir who was returning to Saudi Arabia, was involved in anti-reignation movements while still working for his family company. He promised to depose the Yemeni Socialist Party's government, but was refused by Prince Turki bin Faisal. He then attempted to jeopardize the Yemeni unification process by assassinating YSP leaders, but Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz stopped the process after President Ali Abdullah Saleh complained to King Fahd. The Afghans' internecine tribal conflict had also enraged him. However, he continued to work with the Saudi GID and the Pakistani ISI. He sponsored the 1990 Afghan coup d'état attempt and also lobbied Pakistan's Parliament to carry out a point of no confidence against Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Under Saddam Hussein's reign on August 2, 1990, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait put the Saudi monarch and the royal family in jeopardy. Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism was possibly inciting internal discontent, with Iraqi forces on the Saudi border. Bin Laden met with King Fahd and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan Bin Laden, telling them not to rely on non-Muslim assistance from the US and others and offering to assist Saudi Arabia with his Arab legion one week after King Fahd agreed to U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney's offer of American military assistance. When Sultan asked how bin Laden would protect the fighters if Saddam used Iraqi chemical and biological weapons against them, he replied, "We will fight him with faith." Bin Laden's bid was turned down, and the Saudi monarchy ordered the deployment of US forces in Saudi territories.

Bin Laden condemned Saudi dependence on US forces, arguing that Quran barred non-Muslims from setting foot in the Arabian Peninsula and that the two holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, where the prophet Muhammad received and recited Allah's words, should only be supported by Muslims. Bin Laden attempted to convince the Saudi ulama to release a fatwa condemning the American military deployment, but senior clerics refused out of fear of repression. Bin Laden's critique of the Saudi monarchy prompted them to try to silence him. The 82nd Airborne Division of the United States landed in Dhahran, a north-eastern Saudi city, and was deployed in the desert just 400 miles from Medina.

Meanwhile, the FBI searched El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al-Qaeda agent Ali Mohamed, in New Jersey on November 8, 1990. They found copious evidence of terrorist plots, including those intending to demolish New York City skyscrapers. This was the first report of al-Qaeda terrorist plots outside of Muslim countries. Nosair was eventually found guilty of the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City on November 5, 1990.

Bin Laden was barred from Saudi Arabia by the Saudi government after repeatedly criticizing the Saudi alliance with the US. In a deal broke by Ali Mohamed, he and his followers went first to Afghanistan and then moved to Sudan in 1992. Bin Laden's personal security information was comprised of bodyguards personally chosen by him. They had SA-7, Stinger missiles, AK-47s, RPGs, and PK machine guns in their arsenal. Bin Laden, on the other hand, tried to play a pacifying role in Afghanistan's unfolding civil war by urging warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to join the other mujahideen leaders in negotiations rather than attempting to conquer Kabul for himself.

Bin Laden was monitored in Sudan by US intelligence agents to run daily and film activities at his base, as well as using an intelligence service and signals intelligence to detect his movements.

Bin Laden established a new base in Sudan for Mujahideen operations in Khartoum. He purchased a house on Al-Mashtal Street in the prestigious Al-Riyadh quarter, as well as a retreat at Soba on the Blue Nile. During his stay in Sudan, he devoted a great deal in the infrastructure, both in agriculture and companies. He was the Sudan agent for Hunting Surveys and constructed highways with the same bulldozers he had used to build mountain tracks in Afghanistan. Many of his labourers were the same fighters who had served with his comrades in the war against the Soviet Union. He was generous to the poor and popular with the people. He continued to criticize King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Fahd stripped bin Laden of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 and begged his family to shave his $7 million a year stipend.

Bin Laden was firmly linked with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which made up al-Qaeda's core. The EIJ attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995. The attempt went wrong, and Sudan banned the EIJ from entering Sudan.

Sudan is accused by the US State Department of being a sponsor of international terrorism and bin Laden's establishment of terrorist training camps in the Sudanese desert. However, according to Sudan officials, this tactic became outmoded as the Islamist political leader Hassan al-Turabi lost clout in their region. The Sudanese wanted to engage with the US but American officials refused to meet with them even after they had expelled bin Laden. The State Department had not allowed US intelligence agents to visit Sudan until 2000.

The 9/11 Commission Report states:

The 9/11 Commission's Report goes further: "The 9/11 Commission Report goes further":

bin Laden was allowed to leave Sudan due to the rising pressures on the country, Egypt, and the United States. On 18 May 1996, he returned to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where he established a strong friendship with Mullah Mohammed Omar. According to the 9/11 Commission, Sudanese expulsion has greatly affected bin Laden and his group. According to some African intelligence reports, bin Laden's removal left him without a choice other than becoming a full-time radical, and that the bulk of the 300 Afghan Arabs who left with him became terrorists. Bin Laden's revenue ranged from $20 million to $300 million in Sudan; the government confiscated his building materials; and bin Laden was compelled to liquidate his companies, property, and even his horses.

bin Laden declared war against the US in August 1996. Despite President George H. W. Bush's promise to King Fahd in 1990 that all US forces based in Saudi Arabia would be evacuated until the Iraqi threat was dealt with, by 1996, the Americans were still there. Bush cited the importance of dealing with Saddam's remnants (which Bush had not intended to destroy). "The 'evils' of the Middle East arose from America's attempts to seize the territory and withdraw its support for Israel, according to Bin Laden's description. Saudi Arabia had been turned into an American colony.

He released a fatw against the United States in 1998, the first publication in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a London-based newspaper. It was titled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." In reference to Mecca and Medina, Islam's two most sacred places, Saudi Arabia is often described as "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques." Operation Southern Watch referred to US forces based in Saudi Arabia for the purpose of monitoring air space in Iraq.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan received funds from donors from the days of the Soviet jihad, as well as the Pakistani ISI to create new training camps for Mujahideen fighters. Bin Laden seized Ariana Afghan Airlines, which transported Islamic militants, arms, cash, and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, as well as giving fake identifications to members of bin Laden's terrorist network. Viktor Bout, a weapons smuggler, helped operate the airline, running planes and loading containers. Ariana was being used as a criminal taxi service, according to Michael Scheuer, the CIA's bin Laden unit's chief.

Bin Laden's first bombing attack is thought to have occurred on the 29th of December 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden, which killed two people.

Al-Qaeda was thought to have launched its justification for the assassination of innocent civilians following this bombing. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the assassination of someone standing near the enemy is justified because the perpetrators will receive a proper reward in death, including to Jannah (paradise) if they were poor Muslims and to Jahannam (hell) if they were not faithful or non-believers. The fatwa was given to al-Qaeda members but not to the general population.

bin Laden's al-Qaeda supported jihadis financially and occasionally militarily in Algeria, Egypt, and Afghanistan in the 1990s. Bin Laden sent Qari el-Said, a $40,000 emissary who sent the Muslims to Algeria in 1992 or 1993 to help the Muslims and call war rather than government talks. Their advice washeeded. The civil war that followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with the Islamist retaliation of the government. Bin Laden Issue Station, coded "Alec Station") of the CIA, was launched in January 1996 by the CIA to monitor and execute operations against Bin Laden's activities. Michael Scheuer, a veteran of the CTC's Islamic Extremism Branch, was in charge of Bin Laden Issue Station.

Bin Laden is accused of funding the Luxor massacre of 17 November 1997, which killed 62 civilians and angered the Egyptian public, according to reports. The Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad in mid-1997, causing bin Laden to abandon his Najim Jihad base and relocate his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, another successful assault was launched. Bin Laden aided the Taliban in killing between five and six thousand Hazaras in the city, cementing his friendship with the Taliban.

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri co-signed a fatwa in the name of the World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders, which declared the assassination of North Americans and their allies an "impartial duty for every Muslim" to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Mecca) and the holy mosque (in Mecca). North Americans are "very simple targets," fatwa bin Laden said in the public announcement. "You'll see the results of this in a very short time," he told the attending journalists.

On June 24, 1998, Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri arranged an al-Qaeda summit. The 1998 US embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killed hundreds of civilians in a series of attacks that occurred simultaneously on August 7th. The assaults were attributed to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and they drew Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the public's notice for the first time. The bombings were later identified by Al-Qaeda.

President Bill Clinton ordered a series of cruise missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan on 20 August 1998, as reprisal for the embassy bombings. al-Qaeda was planning for attacks in the United States of America, from personnel to hijack aircraft, according to President Clinton in December 1998. Bin Laden was added to the Top Wanted list by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation on June 7, 1999.

Richard Clarke, a student at the University of Oxford, Bombed Bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, tourists on Mount Nebo, and a website on the Jordan River, as well as the sinking of the destroyer USS The Sullivans in Yemen, and an assault within the US. The execution was foiled by the detention of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sanking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to kill the destroyer, and the detention of Ahmed Ressam.

Bosnia and Herzegovina have been a safe haven for terrorists since 2001, according to a former US State Department official, who also claims that militant elements of the former Sarajevo government were protecting militants, some with links to Osama bin Laden. Rzeczpospolita, one of Poland's most popular daily newspapers, had reported that intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR Brigade suspects a center for training terrorists from Islamic countries in Bocina Donja village near Maglaj, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hundreds of volunteers joined El Moujahed, an all-Mujahedeen unit, a hospital and a prayer hall in 1992.

Bin Laden's companies in Sudan funded small convoys of Arab workers, according to Middle East intelligence reports. Karim Said Atmani, who was identified by authorities as the document forger of a group of Algerians accused of planning the bombings in the United States, was one of them. He is a former roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the man arrested at the Canada-United States border in mid-December 1999 with a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making equipment. A French judge found him guilty of colluding with Osama bin Laden.

A Bosnian government investigation of passport and residency data, which was carried out at the request of the US, revealed that other senior Mujahideen were linked to the Algerian party or other organisations of alleged criminals and had lived in the region 100 kilometers (60 mi) north of Sarajevo, Bosnia's capital, for the past few years. Khalil al-Deek was arrested in Jordan in late December 1999 on suspicion of being complicit in a plot to demolish tourist destinations. Hamid Aich, Bosnian civilian, lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity associated with Osama bin Laden. According to the New York Times' 26 June 1997 study on the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, those detained confessed to serving with Bosnian Muslim forces. In addition, the detained guys confessed to links with Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden and his Tunisian assistant Mehrez Aodouni were granted citizenship and Bosnian passports in 1993 by the government in Sarajevo, according to the journal. Following the September 11 attacks, the Bosnian government denied this information, but it was later discovered that Aodouni was arrested in Turkey and that he had a Bosnian passport at the time. Following this revelation, a new explanation was given that bin Laden did not personally retrieve his Bosnian passport and that officials at the Bosnian embassy in Vienna, who issued the passport, may not have known who bin Laden was at the time.

Three men were arrested in Sarajevo in July 2001, according to the Bosnian daily Osloboenje, who were believed to be linked to bin Laden. The three Egyptian nationals, one of whom was identified as Imad El Misri, were identified as Egyptian nationals. According to the paper, two of the suspects were in possession of Bosnian passports.

Fatos Klosi, the head of Albania's State Intelligence Service (SHISH), said that Osama was operating a terror network in Albania to participate in the Kosovo War under the name of a humanitarian group, and that it had started in 1994. Claude Kader, a member of the family, testified against its existence during his appeal. Four members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) were arrested in Albania and extradited to Egypt by 1998. The mujahideen fighters were ordered by Islamic leaders in Western Europe allies with him and Zawihiri.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloevi quoted from a leaked FBI report that bin Laden's al-Qaeda was present in the Balkans and aided the Kosovo Liberation Army during his hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Bin Laden was said to have used Albania as a launchpad for violence in the area and Europe. Despite the 1998 United States Embassy bombings earlier, Richard Holbrooke said they had told Richard Holbrooke that al-Qaeda was assisting KLA, but the US decided to collaborate with the KLA and thus indirectly with Osama. Miloevi had argued that the US supported the terrorists during Yugoslavia's 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war.

bin Laden's initial denial, as a result of the 9/11 attacks, said, "what the US is tasting today is nothing compared to what we've tasted for decades." For more than eighty years, our umma has been suffering this humiliation and contempt. According to Allah's order, its sons are killed, its blood is spilled, its holy places are assaulted, and it is not governed. Despite this, no one bothers." In response to the attacks, the US launched Operation Terror in Afghanistan to depose the Taliban regime and capture al-Qaeda operatives, as well as other nations' anti-terrorism laws to block future attacks. Bin Laden's Special Operations Division of the CIA was given the opportunity to track down and capture bin Laden. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported that classified evidence connecting al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the September 11 attacks is clear and undisputed. The United Kingdom government came to a similar conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11 attacks, although the government report stated that the facts presented is not necessarily appropriate to prosecute the lawsuit.

Bin Laden denied any involvement in the attacks at the time. bin Laden read a statement released by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel on September 16, 2001, denying blame for the attack. Bin Laden was seen discussing the insurgentation of Khaled al-Harbi in a videotape recovered by US forces in Jalalabad in November 2001 in a way that shows foreknowledge. On December 13, 2001, the tape was broadcast on various news networks. This translation's merits have been disputed. "This translation is very difficult," Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini said. It is not similar to the Arabic at the most significant places where it is held to establish bin Laden's guilt.

bin Laden's denials were denied in the 2004 film, although he denied retracting old claims. He said he had personally ordered the nineteen hijackers in it. Bin Laden, a four-day veteran of Al-Jazeera, accused US President George W. Bush of negligence in the hijacking of the planes on September 11. bin Laden claimed to be inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after witnessing the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War, according to the recordings.

"I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers," Osama bin Laden said on two other tapes broadcast by Al Jazeera in 2006. ... "I was responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers during the raids" (23 May 2006). Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi, and Wail al-Shehri were caught on the tapes as they braced for the attacks (videotape broadcasting September 7, 2006). The September 11 attacks were characterized by the US' support for Israel, the presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia's Kingdom, and the US enforcement of sanctions against Iraq.

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