Osama bin Laden

Vocabulary

al Qaeda: Arabic for "The Base”.

The group is a magnet for radical Muslims seeking more

fundamentalist governments in their home countries and with a common hatred of the United States, Israel

and moderate Muslim governments.

Taliban – “Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement” who ruled Afghanistan from

1996-2001.

Militant – (adjective and noun): vigorously active, combative and

aggressive especially in support of a cause.

Insurgency – armed revolt against a government that is less than an

organised revolution.

Radical – favouring drastic political, economic or social reforms.

Fundamentalist – strong adherence to any set of beliefs in the face of criticism

or unpopularity.

Peshawar – administrative centre for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of

Pakistan.

Early life…

Osama bin Mohammad bin Awad bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957, the 17th of 57 children of millionaire construction magnate Mohammad bin Laden.

His first marriage was to a Syrian cousin at the age of 17, and he is reported to have at least 23 children from at least five wives.

Education…

Conflicting information suggests bin Laden may have studied Management and Economics at university in Jeddah in 1976. It has also been said that he graduated in Civil Engineering.

Some reports say in his student days he could be found in flashy Beirut nightclubs, a free-spender and heavy drinker, fighting over dancers and bar girls.

How he became involved in radical Islamic politics is unclear, though the December 26th 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan appears key.

With his family fortune, bin Laden used Afghanistan to set up training camps and as a base from which to plan attacks on Western countries.

During the 1990’s his family disowned him and he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship.

In 1986 bin Laden moves to Peshawar, begins importing arms and forms his own small brigade of volunteer fighters.

al Qaeda (The Base) is established in 1988.

He returned to Afghanistan in the 1990s, training Islamist militants from across the world in camps allowed to function by the ruling Taliban.

Tall, gaunt and bearded, bin Laden was unhurt by US missile strikes on his Afghan camps after the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.

According to some reports, he was nearly killed by a US bomb when militants were being hunted late in 2001 in the Tora Bora mountains in eastern Afghanistan.

Bin Laden was forced to leave Sudan in 1996 after U.S. pressure on its government, and went to Afghanistan.  In August of that year Bin Laden issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that U.S. military personnel should be killed.

In October, US brands bin Laden as a prime suspect in two bombings in Saudi Arabia which killed 24 U.S. servicemen and two Indians.

August 2nd 1998. Truck bombs exploded at U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam killing 224, including 12 Americans.

August 20th. President Bill Clinton named bin Laden as America's top enemy and accused him of being responsible for the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings. U.S. launched missile strikes against what Clinton called terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan. One destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, whose owner denied any affiliation with bin Laden.

October 12th 2000. Al Qaeda strikes at destroyer USS Cole, harboured at Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors are killed. 

September 11th 2001. Three hijacked planes crash into major U.S. landmarks, destroying New York's World Trade Center and plunging into the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked plane crashes in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people are killed. In a video released later, bin Laden says the collapse of the towers exceeded al Qaeda's expectations.

September 17th 2001. U.S. President George W. Bush declares bin Laden is "Wanted: Dead or Alive".

October 7th 2001. United States attacks Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, host to bin Laden and al Qaeda.

December 6th 2001. Anti-Taliban forces capture bin Laden's main base in Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

November 2002. Al Qaeda claims responsibility for three suicide car bombs in Kenya which blew up the Mombasa Paradise resort hotel, popular with Israelis, killing 15 people and wounding 80. 

October 2004. Bin Laden bursts into the U.S. election campaign in his first videotaped message in over a year to deride Bush. 

January 2006 - Bin Laden's first public message for over a year is a bid to show he is still in command of al Qaeda.

September 2006. Bush vows "America will find you".

September 2007. Bin Laden issues first new video for nearly three years, telling U.S. it is vulnerable despite its power.

January 24th 2010. Bin Laden claims responsibility for the failed Dec. 25 bombing of a U.S.-bound plane in an audio tape and vows to continue attacks on the United States.

March 25th 2010. Bin Laden threatens al Qaeda will kill any Americans it takes prisoner if accused Sept. 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, held by United States, is put to death

January 21st 2011. Bin Laden says in an audio recording that the release of French hostages held in Niger by al Qaeda depends on France's soldiers leaving Muslim lands.

Bin Laden approved the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States in which nearly 3,000 people died, saying later that the results had exceeded his expectations.

With a $25m US bounty on his head, he then evaded the world's biggest manhunt for a decade, with tens of thousands of US and Pakistani troops looking for him.

It now appears that he had been hiding in the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On May 2nd 2011 Osama bin Laden was killed in a million-dollar compound in the resort of Abbottabad, 60 km north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

On the same day Osama bin Laden was buried at sea according to senior US administration officials who said Islamic practice calls for burial within 24 hours.

They also said it would have been too hard to find a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist, and wanted to avoid creating a pilgrimage site.