Usāmah bin Muhammad bin `Awad
bin Lādin (born
March 10,
1957 or
July 30,
1957) (Arabic:
أسامة بن محمد بن عود بن لادن), commonly known as Osama bin Laden
(أسامة بن لادن), is the head of
al-Qaida, a militant
Islamist organization
that has been involved in
terrorist attacks
against civilians and military targets around the world.
He is a member of the immensely wealthy
bin Laden family. The
bin Laden family publicly disowned Osama bin Laden in 1994, shortly before the
Saudi Arabian
government revoked
his
citizenship, and
several years before the
September 11, 2001 attacks.
The
government of the United States
named Osama bin Laden the prime suspect in the
September 11, 2001 attacks,
which killed at least 2,992 people, although he has not been formally charged.
Bin Laden did not explicitly admit responsibility for the attacks until
October 2004, just days before the US Presidential election, when a
videotape of Osama Bin Laden
(http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/bin.laden.transcript/index.html)
directly admitting he was behind the September 11 attacks was played on
Qatar's
al Jazeera television
channel. Before October 2004, there was already some evidence suggesting that
he was behind the attacks. In a videotape purportedly discovered in
Afghanistan in
2001, a person
resembling bin Laden appeared to discuss the attacks using language suggesting
that he participated in planning the attacks. For more information, see
Osama and September 11
below.
Bin Laden is widely proclaimed to be
the "most wanted man in the world." On
March 18,
2004, the
United States House of Representatives
unanimously voted to double the reward for information leading to his capture
from $25 to $50 million USD. His current whereabouts are unknown, although
some believe he is hiding along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan
border or in the semi-autonomous Pakistani tribal area of
Waziristan.
Osama bin Laden speaks and writes
Arabic, and possibly
knows
Pashto.
Names
Osama bin Laden's name can be
transliterated in
several ways. The form used here, Osama bin Laden, is used by
most
English-language
mass media, including
CNN and the
BBC. The second most
common English-language form of the name is Usama bin Laden
(used by the
FBI and
FOX News). Less
common renderings include Ussamah Bin Ladin and
Oussama Ben Laden (used in
French-language mass
media). The latter part of the name can also be found as ibn Laden,
Binladen or Binladin.
Strictly speaking, under the
Arabic naming
convention, it is incorrect to use "bin Laden" as though it was a Western
surname. His full name means "Osama, son of Mohammed, 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. The family company is known as
the
Binladin Brothers for Contracting and Industry
and is one of the largest corporations in Saudi Arabia. For this reason,
although the Arabic convention would be to refer to him either 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.
Osama bin Laden has several
aliases and
nicknames, including
the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah,
Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, and the
Director.
Appearance and manner
Bin Laden is often described as lanky —
tall and thin, the
FBI describes his
height as 6' 4" (193 cm) to 6' 6" (198 cm) and his weight as about 160 pounds
(75 kg). Like most
Arabs, bin Laden has
an olive complexion. He is left-handed and usually walks with a cane. Although
he is a sunni muslim, he wears a sufi shia white turban and no longer dons the
khofiya and egal normally worn by saudi men.
He reportedly suffers from
kidney disease (see
below). There has also been speculation in the Western media that he might
have
Marfan syndrome.[1]
(http://dir.salon.com/people/feature/2001/11/09/marfan/index.html)
Childhood
Osama bin Laden was born in
Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, to
Muhammad Awad bin Ladin,
a wealthy businessman involved in construction and closely tied to the
Saudi royal family.
There is no definitive account of the number of children Mohammed bin Laden
had, but the number is generally put at 54. In addition, various accounts
place Osama as his seventeenth son, while others say he was the last of 25
sons.
The large number of bin Laden siblings
is the result of
polygyny; his father
was married ten times, although to no more than four women at a time per
Islamic law. Osama
bin Laden is the only son of the elder bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida
al-Attas, who is reportedly of Syrian descent. A woman who in
1971 had attended an
English language course with Osama recalled him saying with some sadness that
his mother was a
concubine[2]
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1595000/1595205.stm).
His family originally came from
Hadhramaut,
Yemen. He was raised
as a devout
Sunni
Muslim and in
interviews he frequently invokes
Allah (God).
After his graduation from secondary school in
1973, bin Laden went
to
Beirut, the capital
of
Lebanon, and
allegedly frequented bars and nightclubs. As a college student, he studied
business and project administration. He also earned a
degree in
civil engineering
from
King Abdul Aziz University
in
Jeddah in
1979, possibly in
preparation for taking over parts of his father's extensive construction and
civil engineering business.
After his father died, bin Laden inherited
what was first estimated to be a fortune of US$300 million; more recent
estimates put his holdings at about US$25 million.
In 1974, at the age of 18, bin Laden
married his first wife (and first cousin), Najwah Ghanem. Islam permits men to
take as many as four wives at one time and Bin Laden reportedly married four
other women, divorcing one. He has fathered at least 24 children. Najwah, a
Syrian and his mother's niece, reportedly had 11 children by bin Laden, seven
of them sons, including Abdallah, Omar, Saad, and Muhammad. Saad, born in
1979, is reportedly active in an Iran-based al-Qaida network. Omar and
Abdallah were reportedly organizing the U.S. branch of the World Congress of
Muslim Youth in
Falls Church,
Virginia during the
1990s.
Afghan Jihad
His wealth and connections permitted
him to pursue his interest in supporting the
mujahedeen, Muslim
guerrillas fighting
the
Soviet Union in
Afghanistan following
the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
in
1979. (See
the
History of Afghanistan.)
By 1984 he 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.
MAK was supported by the governments of
Pakistan, the
United States[3]
(http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1#BODY)
and Saudi Arabia, and nurtured by
Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence.
Formation of Al-Qaida
By
1988, Osama bin Laden
had split from the MAK and established a new militant group, later dubbed
al-Qaida by the U.S.
government, which included many of the more militant MAK members he had met in
Afghanistan. The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in
1989 and bin Laden
was lauded as a
mujaheddin hero in
Saudi Arabia. After
Iraq invaded Kuwait
in 1990, bin Laden offered to aid in the defense of Saudi Arabia but he was
rebuffed by the Saudi Arabian government. Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi
Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military and demanded an end to the presence
of foreign military bases in Saudi Arabia. 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
Arabian government claims legitimacy based on their role as guardians of the
sacred Muslim cities of
Mecca and
Medina. After the
Gulf War, the establishment of permanent bases for non-Muslim U.S. forces in
Saudi Arabia continued to undermine the Saudi Arabian rulers' legitimacy and
inflamed anti-government Islamist militants, including bin Laden. Bin Laden's
increasingly strident criticisms of the Saudi monarchy led the Saudi Arabian
government expel him to
Sudan in 1991.
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 of mujaheddin operations in 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 government figure
Hassan al Turabi. The
funding from these ventures was used to run several training camps on his
farmland, where Islamist militants could receive instruction in firearms use
and the use of explosives from former Afghan mujaheddin.
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.
Sudanese officials claim that they
offered to extradite bin Laden to either the United States or Saudi Arabia in
the mid-1990s
but former U.S. counter-terrorism officials, including
Richard Clarke, deny
the claim. Whether the offer was made or not is still disputed - various
Republican media outlets claim the offer was there.
[4]
(http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/9/165600.shtml)
In May
1996, under
increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States, Sudan
expelled bin Laden. He chartered a plane and flew to
Kabul before settling
in
Jalalabad,
Afghanistan. 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
1997
massacre of 62
tourists in
Luxor,
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.
Terrorist attacks on the United States
Osama bin Laden's first strike against
the United States was the December 29, 1992 bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in
Aden,
Yemen that killed a
Yemeni hotel employee, an Austrian national and seriously injured his wife.
About 100 US soldiers, part of
Operation Restore Hope,
had been staying at the hotel for two weeks but had left two days earlier for
Somalia. Some sources
believe that Osama bin Laden funded and/or directed the
World Trade Center
bombing in
1993. Bin Laden and
the
Indonesian militant
known as
Hambali allegedly
funded the aborted
Operation Bojinka
conspiracy until 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 ruling to kill the
Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty
for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do
it, in order to liberate the
al-Aqsa Mosque (in
Jerusalem) and the
holy mosque (in
Makka) from their
grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam,
defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the
words of Almighty
Allah, 'and fight the
pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until
there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in
Allah.'" (See
Osama bin Laden Fatwa).
Osama bin Laden is officially wanted by
the United States in connection with the
August 7,
1998 bombings of the United States embassies
in
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania and
Nairobi,
Kenya, that killed
225 people and injured more than 4000. Since June 1999, bin Laden has been
listed as one of the
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
and
FBI Most Wanted Terrorists.
Al-Qaida was allegedly involved in several unsuccessful conspiracies,
including the
2000 millennium attack plots
to bomb Los Angeles airport, several tourist sites in
Jordan and the
USS The Sullivans,
and well as the subsequent
Paris embassy terrorist attack plot.
The al-Qaida organization is allegedly responsible for the successful
USS Cole bombing in
October, 2000.
In response to these attacks, 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.
military launched an assassination attempt using cruise missiles. The attack
failed to harm bin Laden but killed 19 other people. The U.S. offered a US$25
million reward for information leading to bin Laden's apprehension or
conviction and, in
1999, convinced the
United Nations to
impose sanctions against
Afghanistan in an
attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.
Osama and September 11
Immediately after the
September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks
in the
United States, the
United States government named Osama bin Laden as the prime suspect. At first
he denied this accusation, suggesting the attacks were the fault of Jews or of
the CIA. But in subsequent statements and interviews he expressed admiration
for whoever was responsible. He took credit for "inspiring" what he calls the
"blessed attacks" of September 11th in several public statements.
In December
2001 U.S. forces in
Afghanistan captured
a videotape during a raid on a house in
Jalalabad, in which a
man who looks like bin Laden is seen and heard discussing the September 11
attacks with a group of followers. According to the official U.S.
translation of this
tape—which has been disputed—bin Laden says:
- We calculated in advance the
number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the
position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would
be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all.
(...Inaudible...) Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking
that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the
building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above
it only. This is all that we had hoped for. (full
text of the tape transcript)
(http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/12/13/tape.transcript/)
In December 2001 there was disagreement
whether the tape should be released or not. Some in the Bush Administration
believed the tape would provide decisive evidence for bin Laden's involvement
in the September 11th attacks; other feared allegation that the tape was
fabricated, taking into account the poor quality of the tape. The tape was
finally released on
December 13. Already
on the 14th, allegation arose from the Pakistani political party JUI that the
tape was doctored, the photographic quality of the video being so low that a
fake bin Laden would be indistinguishable. Others claimed that the video could
have been doctored using digital technology and computers.
In January
2002
CNN reported the U.S.
spread leaflets of doctored photographs of Osama bin Laden in
Afghanistan, portraying him shaved and in western clothing, aiming to lead the
Al-Qaida fighters to believe that Osama had deserted them.[5]
(http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/04/ret.bin.laden.leaflets/)
Some argued that if the U.S. was willing to fabricate photographs to achieve
their goals then they would probably also be willing to fabricate videos.
United States Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, when
asked "...whether the leaflet could be used by some to say the United
States is willing to doctor or make up things -- as has been alleged about the
videotape found in Afghanistan by the United States..." (quoting the
above cited article), he is reported to have replied that he had not thought
about the possibility.
In January 2002 a
German expert in
Middle Eastern studies, Gernot Rotter, as well as two other independent
translators of Arabic, reported in German television (ARD) and newspapers
(Netzeitung and Der Spiegel) that several serious mistakes could be found in
the official American translation of the tape.
Over the course of time after the
attacks September the 11th several other videotapes which were at the time
presented as evidence for bin Laden's involvement was presented in the media
(11.11.01 Sunday Times /
Al-Jazeera 26.12.02 /
04.02 Al-Jazeera/AP / Sunday Times 19.05.02 / 09.02 Al-Jazeera etc). The video
found in
Jalalabad in December
2001 is still the most often cited as evidence for bin Laden's participation,
suggesting that this video presents the strongest case for a bin Laden
involvement in the September 11th attacks.
As early as October 2001, the U.S.
presented evidence to
NATO, behind closed
doors, of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the 11th of September attacks.
NATO's general secretary
George Robertson
reported to AP that the U.S. had presented clear and decisive evidence of
Osama bin Laden's participation, causing him to invoke article 5 in the NATO
pact. The evidence presented to NATO was never presented to the public nor in
the open press; according to American officials, the reason for this was fears
that terrorists might find out secrets about American intelligence. The nature
of this evidence thus still remains uncertain. The U.S. -- because of its
unwillingness to show the evidence that NATO found so compelling -- has had to
resort to low quality videos (like the 2001 Jalalabad video) when presenting
evidence to the public.
If this tape is authentic and its
transcripts correctly translated, it shows at the very least that bin Laden
claimed to some that he had advance knowledge of the attacks on the
World Trade Center,
including the precise nature of the attacks. One leading al-Qaida member,
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,
claims (according to his interrogators) that the idea for the attacks came
from him and not from bin Laden. Khalid has been in United States custody
since September
2003. The extent to
which bin Laden was involved in funding or overseeing the operation is
unknown. Despite this, and despite the fact that bin Laden's assumed
involvement in the 9/11 attacks has never been publicly, transparently and
conclusively established, it has, as of 2004, become the mainstream opinion
("world opinion") that bin Laden was responsible for and/or masterminded the
attacks, argued by some to have been a consequence of the continued assertions
from U.S. officials that he was responsible. Whether it will even be possible
in light of such overwhelming public opinion to objectively establish the
truth about his involvement in the attacks (eg. in the event of his capture)
remains to be seen. However, there is more substantial evidence for bin
Laden's involvement in other, pre-9/11 attacks. It is for this reason that the
FBI's most wanted
poster of bin Laden only makes reference to bin Laden being sought for
pre-9/11 terrorist activity.
Nevertheless, bin Laden has publicly praised
the 9/11 attacks in several instances and has taken credit for being their
"inspiration." It is clear in many of his public statements that he views
himself as an active participant in the attacks, whether or not he deserves
the credit the West gives him as their "mastermind." A good example is this
passage from his October 2001 interview with Al-Jazeera:
- As for the World Trade Center,
the ones who were attacked and who died in it were a financial power. It
wasn't a children's school! And it wasn't a residence. And the general
consensus is that most of the people who were in there were men that backed
the biggest financial force in the world that spreads worldwide mischief
[ta`ithu fil ardi fasaadaa]. And those individuals should stand for Allah,
and to re-think and re-do their calculations. We treat others like they
treat us. Those who kill our women and our innocent, we kill their women and
innocent, until they stop from doing so.[6]
(http://www.religioscope.com/info/doc/jihad/ubl_int_1.htm)
In October of 2004, a videotape was
released of Bin Laden directly admitting that he had ordered the September 11
attacks. The transcript has been released.[7]
Current status
Osama bin Laden's current location is
unknown. After the September 11 attacks, the United States asked the
Taliban government of
Afghanistan to "hand him over," but declined to provide any evidence
implicating Osama in the attacks. The Taliban counter-offer to try bin Laden
in an Islamic court or extradite him to a third-party country was deemed
unacceptable by the U.S. government. The
U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
resulted in the death or arrest of numerous militiamen, but bin Laden was not
found. In September 2003, a videotape of
Ayman al-Zawahiri and
bin Laden, accompanied by an audiotape, were released to the al-Jazeera
network in Qatar, purporting to prove that both men are still alive. Bin Laden
appeared in a mountainous region wearing traditional Pathan attire. The date
of the videotape recording could not be ascertained.
There had been suggestions that bin
Laden was killed or fatally injured during U.S. bombardments or he may have
died of natural causes. The U.S. military had reported that bin Laden suffered
from a kidney disorder requiring him to have access to advanced medical
facilities, possibly
dialysis.
Ayman al-Zawahiri,
also an
FBI Most Wanted Terrorist,
is a physician and may have provided medical care to bin Laden. Although Osama
has been publicly disowned by his family, an estranged family member, Carmen
Binladin, speculates (without providing evidence) that unnamed family members
may be providing financial support to Osama bin Laden.
A Spanish court indicted Osama bin
Laden and 34 others on charges related to terrorism on
September 17,
2003.
Iranian news agency
IRNA reported on
February 27,
2004 that bin Laden
had been caught some time earlier in
Pakistan. The news
was spread by
Asheq Hossein,
director of the state-sponsored radio station, who mentioned two sources. The
first source was a reporter of the Pakistani newspaper "The Nation,"
Shamim Shahed, who
denied ever telling this to Hossein. The second source was "someone closely
related to intelligence agencies and Afghan tribal elders." Both
the Pentagon and a
spokesperson of the Pakistani armed forces have denied the capture of bin
Laden. Similar rumours have appeared from time to time since the start of U.S.
military operations in Afghanistan but none have been confirmed.
On
October 21,
2004,
John Lehman, a member
of the
9/11 Commission,
reported that Osama bin Laden is indeed alive, and that
the Pentagon knows
exactly where he is. According to Lehman, bin Laden is living in South
Waziristan in the
Baluchistan Mountains
of the
Baluchistan region,
surviving from donations from outside countries such as the
United Arab Emirates
and high-ranking ministers inside
Saudi Arabia. "There
is an American presence in the area, but we can't just send in troops," Lehman
said. "If we did, we could have another Vietnam, and the United States cannot
afford that right now."[8]
On
October 29,
2004, the Arab
television network
Al Jazeera broadcast
a video tape of Osama bin Laden, addressing citizens of the
United States,
discussing the reasons behind the
September 11, 2001
attacks. This release came just four days before the
2004 U.S. presidential election.
See
2004 bin Laden video
See also
External links
News
Interviews
-
Interview with Osama bin Laden
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html)
- Questions partly by some of his followers and partly by
ABC reporter
John Miller, (May
1998)
-
Alleged interview
(http://www.americanfreepress.net/Mideast/Al-Qaeda_Not_Involved/al-qaeda_not_involved.html)
- Transcription from Pakistani Newspaper of questions answered via written
correspondence with the Taliban, who supposedly passed them to bin Laden
-
Transcript of interview by CNN
(http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/binladen/binladenintvw-cnn.pdf)
(PDF file) - Correspondent
Peter Arnett (March
20, 1997). The interview was first broadcast on
CNN on May 10,
1997. This was Osama bin Ladin's first sit-down with a Western TV journalist
Other
