85 Facts About Osama Laden

Osama Laden's father was Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire from Hadhramaut, Yemen, and the founder of the construction company, Saudi Binladin Group.

Osama Laden studied at university in the country until 1979, when he joined Mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Osama Laden helped to fund the Mujahideen by funneling arms, money, and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and gained popularity among many Arabs.

Osama Laden was banished from Saudi Arabia in 1992, lost his Saudi citizenship in 1994, and shifted his base to Sudan until US pressure forced him to leave in 1996.

Osama Laden became the subject of a decade-long international manhunt, during which the FBI offered a $25million bounty on him.

Related searches

The couple had four children, and bin Osama Laden lived in the new household with three half-brothers and one half-sister.

Osama Laden studied economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University.

Bin Osama Laden attended an English-language course in Oxford, England, during 1971.

At age 17 in 1974, bin Osama Laden married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia, Syria; but they were later separated and she left Afghanistan on 9 September 2001.

Bin Osama Laden's other known wives were Khadijah Sharif ; Khairiah Sabar ; Siham Sabar ; and Amal al-Sadah.

Bin Osama Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children with his wives.

Many of bin Osama Laden's children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and as of 2010, Iranian authorities reportedly continue to control their movements.

Osama Laden describes him as a frugal man and strict father, who enjoyed taking his large family on shooting trips and picnics in the desert.

Bin Osama Laden had an olive complexion and was left-handed, usually walking with a cane.

Bin Osama Laden had stopped wearing the traditional Saudi male keffiyeh and instead wore the traditional Yemeni male keffiyeh.

Bin Osama Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered in demeanor.

Major component of bin Osama Laden's ideology was the concept that civilians from enemy countries, including women and children, were legitimate targets for jihadists to kill.

Bin Osama Laden believed that the Islamic world was in crisis and that the complete restoration of Sharia law would be the only way to set things right in the Muslim world.

Osama Laden opposed such alternatives as secular government, as well as pan-Arabism, socialism, communism, and democracy.

Osama Laden subscribed to the Athari school of Islamic theology.

Bin Osama Laden believed that Afghanistan, under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban, was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world.

Bin Osama Laden consistently dwelt on the need for violent jihad to right what he believed were injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the United States and sometimes by other non-Muslim states.

Osama Laden called for the elimination of Israel, and called upon the United States to withdraw all of its civilians and military personnel from the Middle East, as well as from every Islamic country of the world.

Osama Laden was indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in Madrid, New York City, and Tripoli.

Osama Laden believed this would lead to economic collapse of the enemy countries, by "bleeding" them dry.

Related searches

Osama Laden invoked democracy both as an example of the deceit and fraudulence of Western political system—American law being "the law of the rich and wealthy"—and as the reason civilians are responsible for their government's actions and so can be lawfully punished by death.

Osama Laden denounced democracy as a "religion of ignorance" that violates Islam by issuing man-made laws, but in a later statement compares the Western democracy of Spain favorably to the Muslim world in which the ruler is accountable.

Bin Osama Laden was heavily anti-Semitic, stating that most of the negative events that occurred in the world were the direct result of Jewish actions.

Osama Laden stated that Jews and Muslims could never get along and that war was "inevitable" between them, and further accused the US of stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment.

Osama Laden claimed that the US State Department and US Department of Defense were controlled by Jews, for the sole purpose of serving the Israeli state's goals.

Bin Osama Laden was opposed to music on religious grounds, and his attitude towards technology was mixed.

Osama Laden was interested in earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants on the one hand, but rejected chilled water on the other.

Bin Osama Laden believed climate change to be a serious threat and penned a letter urging Americans to work with President Barack Obama to make a rational decision to "save humanity from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny".

Bin Osama Laden established camps inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and trained volunteers from across the Muslim world to fight against the Soviet-backed regime, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Between 1986 and 1987, bin Osama Laden set up a base in eastern Afghanistan for several dozen of his own Arab soldiers.

From this base, bin Osama Laden participated in some combat activity against the Soviets, such as the Battle of Jaji in 1987.

Osama Laden alleged that the Pakistan Army induced Osama bin Laden to lead an armed group of Sunni tribals, from Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province, into Gilgit and its surrounding areas to suppress the revolt.

Osama Laden's research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed at an 11 August 1988, meeting between several senior leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Azzam, and bin Laden, where it was agreed to join bin Laden's money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan.

Osama Laden offered to send al-Qaeda to overthrow the Soviet-aligned Yemeni Socialist Party government in South Yemen but was rebuffed by Prince Turki bin Faisal.

Osama Laden then tried to disrupt the Yemeni unification process by assassinating YSP leaders but was halted by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz after President Ali Abdullah Saleh complained to King Fahd.

Osama Laden was angered by the internecine tribal fighting among the Afghans.

Osama Laden funded the 1990 Afghan coup d'etat attempt and lobbied the Parliament of Pakistan to carry out an unsuccessful motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Bin Osama Laden publicly denounced Saudi dependence on the US forces, arguing that the Quran prohibited non-Muslims from setting foot in the Arabian Peninsula and that two holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, the cities in which the prophet Muhammad received and recited Allah's message, should only be defended by Muslims.

Bin Osama Laden tried to convince the Saudi ulama to issue a fatwa condemning the American military deployment but senior clerics refused out of fear of repression.

In 1991, bin Osama Laden was expelled from Saudi Arabia by its government after repeatedly criticizing the Saudi alliance with the United States.

Related searches

Meanwhile, in March–April 1992, bin Osama Laden tried to play a pacifying role in the escalating civil war in Afghanistan, by urging warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to join the other mujahideen leaders negotiating a coalition government instead of trying to conquer Kabul for himself.

In Sudan, bin Osama Laden established a new base for Mujahideen operations in Khartoum.

Osama Laden bought a house on Al-Mashtal Street in the affluent Al-Riyadh quarter and a retreat at Soba on the Blue Nile.

Osama Laden was the Sudan agent for the British firm Hunting Surveys, and built roads using the same bulldozers he had employed to construct mountain tracks in Afghanistan.

Osama Laden was generous to the poor and popular with the people.

US State Department accused Sudan of being a sponsor of international terrorism and bin Osama Laden of operating terrorist training camps in the Sudanese desert.

In late 1995, when Bin Osama Laden was still in Sudan, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin Osama Laden.

The Saudis did not want Bin Osama Laden, giving as their reason their revocation of his citizenship.

Osama Laden chose to return to Jalalabad, Afghanistan aboard a chartered flight on 18 May 1996; there he forged a close relationship with Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Bin Osama Laden effectively took over Ariana Afghan Airlines, which ferried Islamic militants, arms, cash, and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, as well as provided false identifications to members of bin Osama Laden's terrorist network.

Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Osama Laden unit, concluded that Ariana was being used as a terrorist taxi service.

In 1992 or 1993, bin Osama Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government.

Bin Osama Laden helped cement his alliance with the Taliban by sending several hundred Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.

At the public announcement, fatwa bin Osama Laden announced that North Americans are "very easy targets".

In retaliation for the embassy bombings, President Bill Clinton ordered a series of cruise missile strikes on bin Osama Laden-related targets in Sudan and Afghanistan on 20 August 1998.

Osama Laden 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 materials.

Osama Laden was convicted of colluding with Osama bin Laden by a French court.

Head of Albania's State Intelligence Service, Fatos Klosi, said that Osama Laden was running a terror network in Albania to take part in the Kosovo War under the guise of a humanitarian organisation and it was reported to have been started in 1994.

Osama Laden claimed bin Laden had used Albania as a launchpad for violence in the region and Europe.

Osama Laden claimed that they had informed Richard Holbrooke that KLA was being aided by al-Qaeda but the US decided to cooperate with the KLA and thus indirectly with Osama despite the 1998 United States embassy bombings earlier.

Related searches

On 16 September 2001, bin Osama Laden read a statement later broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel denying responsibility for the attack.

Bin Osama Laden was still wanted by the Libyan government at the time of his death.

Osama bin Laden was first indicted by a grand jury of the United States on 8 June 1998, on a charges of conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States and prosecutors further charged that bin Laden was the head of the terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, and that he was a major financial backer of Islamic fighters worldwide.

The evidence against bin Osama Laden included courtroom testimony by former al-Qaeda members and satellite phone records, from a phone purchased for him by al-Qaeda procurement agent Ziyad Khaleel in the United States.

Bin Osama Laden became the 456th person listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, when he was added on 7 June 1999, following his indictment along with others for capital crimes in the 1998 embassy attacks.

On 10 October 2001, bin Laden appeared as well on the initial list of the top 22 FBI Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by the President of the United States George W Bush, in direct response to the September 11 attacks, but which was again based on the indictment for the 1998 embassy attack.

Bin Osama Laden was among a group of thirteen fugitive terrorists wanted on that latter list for questioning about the 1998 embassy bombings.

Bin Osama Laden remains the only fugitive ever to be listed on both FBI fugitive lists.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks it was revealed that President Clinton had signed a directive authorizing the CIA to apprehend bin Osama Laden and bring him to the United States to stand trial after the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa; if taking bin Osama Laden alive was deemed impossible, then deadly force was authorized.

Bin Osama Laden was believed to be hiding in the White Mountains in Afghanistan's east, near the Pakistani border.

Intelligence officials assembled what they believed to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Osama Laden began the Battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border.

Subsequently, bin Osama Laden retreated further from public contact to avoid capture.

Bin Osama Laden wrote that the tatarrus doctrine needs to be revisited based on the modern-day context and clear boundaries established.

Osama Laden asked a subordinate to draw up a jihadist code of conduct that would constrain military operations in order to avoid civilian casualties.

In Yemen, Bin Osama Laden urged his allies to seek a truce that would bring the country stability, or would at least show the people that they were careful in keeping Muslims safe on the basis of peace.

Osama Laden instructed his followers around the world to focus on education and persuasion rather than entering into confrontations with Islamic political parties.

Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 2 May 2011, shortly after 1:00 AM local time by a United States military special operations unit.

Bin Osama Laden was killed within the fortified complex of buildings that were probably built for him, and had reportedly been his home for at least five years.

Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari denied that his country's security forces sheltered bin Osama Laden, and called any supposed support for bin Osama Laden by the Pakistani government baseless speculation.

Documents captured from the Abbottabad compound generally show that bin Osama Laden was wary of contact with Pakistani intelligence and police, especially in light of Pakistan's role in the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Related searches