Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin
Laden (with
numerous variations; , Usāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʾAwaḍ bin
Lādin) (born 10 March 1957) is a member of the prominent
Saudi
bin Laden family and the alleged founding
leader of the organization al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden
is on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation
's list of FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
for his possible involvement with the circa 1998 bombings of the
United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam
, Tanzania, and Nairobi
, Kenya
.
Variations of bin Laden's name
There is not a universally accepted standard in the West for
transliterating Arabic words and
names into English, so bin Laden's name is spelled in many
different ways. The version translation most often used by
English-language mass
media is
Osama bin Laden. Most American government
agencies, including the FBI and
CIA, use either "
Usama bin
Laden" or "
Usama bin Ladin", both of which are often
abbreviated to
UBL. Less common renderings include
"
Ussamah Bin Ladin" and "
Oussama Ben Laden"
(
French-language mass media). The
last two words of the name can also be found as "
Binladen"
or (as used by his family in the West) "
Binladin". The
spelling with 'o' and 'e' comes from a Persian-influenced
pronunciation used in Afghanistan where he was for a long
time.
Strictly speaking, Arabic
linguistic conventions dictate that he be
referred to as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden", not "bin Laden," as
"Bin Laden" is not used as a surname in the
Western manner, but simply as part of his
name, which in its long form means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of
'Awad, son of Laden". Still, "bin Laden" has become nearly
universal in Western references to him.
Bin Laden's admirers commonly use several
aliases and
nicknames,
including
the Prince,
the Sheikh,
Al-Amir,
Abu Abdallah,
Sheikh Al-Mujahid, the
Lion Sheik,
the
Director,
Imam Mehdi and
Samaritan.
Childhood, education and personal life
Osama bin
Laden was born in Riyadh
, Saudi Arabia. In a 1998 interview, he gave his birth date
as 10 March 1957. His father
Muhammed
Awad bin Laden was a wealthy businessman with close ties to the
Saudi royal family. Osama bin
Laden was born the only son of Muhammed bin Laden's tenth wife,
Hamida al-Attas.Osama's parents
divorced soon after he was born; Osama's mother then married
Muhammad al-Attas. The couple had four children, and Osama lived in
the new household with three half-brothers and one
half-sister.
Bin Laden was raised as a devout
Wahhabi
Muslim. From 1968 to 1976 he attended the
"élite" secular
Al-Thager Model
School.
Bin Laden studied economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz
University
. Some reports suggest bin Laden earned a
degree in
civil engineering in 1979, or a degree in
public administration in 1981.
Other sources describe him as having left university during his
third year,never completing a college degree, though "hard
working." At university, bin Laden's main interest was religion,
where he was involved in both "interpreting the
Quran and
jihad" and charitable
work. He also writes poetry.
In 1974,
at the age of 17, bin Laden married his first wife Najwa Ghanem at Latakia
.
According to CNN national security correspondent David Ensore, as
of 2002 bin Laden had married four women and fathered roughly 25 or
26 children.Other sources report that he has fathered anywhere from
12 to 24 children.
Beliefs and ideology
Bin Laden believes that the restoration of
Sharia law will set things right in the Muslim world,
and that all other ideologies—"
pan-Arabism,
socialism,
communism,
democracy"—must be opposed. These beliefs, along
with violent expansive jihad, have sometimes been called
Qutbism. He believes Afghanistan under the rule of
Mullah Omar's
Taliban was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim
world.
Bin
Laden has consistently dwelt on the need for violent jihad to right
what he believes are injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the
United States and sometimes by other non-Muslim states, the need to
eliminate the state of Israel
, and the
necessity of forcing the US to withdraw from the Middle East. He has also called on
Americans to "reject the immoral acts of
fornication (and)
homosexuality,
intoxicants,
gambling,
and
usury," in an October 2002 letter.
Probably the most infamous part of Bin Laden's ideology is that
civilians, including women and children,
are legitimate targets of jihad. Bin Laden is
antisemitic, and has delivered warnings against
alleged Jewish conspiracies: "These Jews are masters of usury and
leaders in treachery. They will leave you nothing, either in this
world or the next."
Shia Muslims have been
listed along with "Heretics,... America and Israel," as the four
principal "enemies of Islam" at ideology classes of bin Laden's
Al-Qaeda organization.
In keeping with
Wahhabi beliefs, bin Laden
opposes
music on religious grounds, and his
attitude towards
technology is mixed. He
is interested in "earth-moving
machinery
and
genetic engineering of
plants" on the one hand, but rejects "chilled
water" on the other.
His
viewpoints and methods of achieving them have led to him been
designated as a "terrorist" by scholars,
journalists from the New York Times,
the British
Broadcasting Corporation, and Qatari news station Al Jazeera, analysts such as Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer, Marc Sageman, and Bruce Hoffman and he was
indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in
Madrid
, New York
City
, and Tripoli
.
Militant activity
Mujahideen in Afghanistan
After
leaving college in 1979 bin Laden joined Abdullah Azzam to fight the Soviet Invasion of
Afghanistan and lived for a time in Peshawar
.
By 1984, with Azzam, bin Laden established
Maktab al-Khadamat, which funneled money,
arms and
Muslim fighters from around
the Arabic 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.
He moved to Peshawar in 1994. Osama established a camp in Afghanistan, and
with other volunteers fought the Soviets
.
It was during his time in Peshawar that he began to wear
camouflage-print jackets and carrying a captured
Soviet
assault rifle, which
urban legends claimed he had obtained by
killing a Russian soldier with his bare hands.
Formation and structuring of Al-Qaeda
By 1988, bin Laden had split from
Maktab al-Khidamat, while Azzam acted as
support for Afghan fighters, Laden wanted a more military role. One
of the main leading points 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. Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia
in 1990 as a hero of jihad, who along with his Arab legion, "had
brought down the mighty superpower" of the Soviet Union.
However,
during this time Iraq
invaded
Kuwait
and Laden
met with Sultan,
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and told him not to depend on
non-Muslim troops and offered to help defend Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed and after the American offer to help
was accepted he publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the
US military. Bin Laden's criticism of the
Saudi monarchy led that
government to attempt to silence
him.
Balkan wars
One of the former State Department officials has described Bosnia
and Herzegovina of that time as a safe haven for terrorists, after
it was revealed that militant elements of the former Sarajevo
government were protecting extremists, some with ties to Osama bin
Laden.
In
1997, Rzeczpospolita, one
of the largest Polish daily newspapers, reported that intelligence
services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR Brigade
suspected that a center for training terrorists from Islamic
countries was located in the Bocina Donja village near Maglaj
in Bosnia and
Herzegovina
. In 1992, hundreds of volunteers joined an
"all-mujahedeen unit" called El Moujahed in an abandoned hillside
factory, a compound with a hospital and prayer hall. According to
Middle East intelligence reports.
Bin Laden financed small convoys of
recruits from the Arab world through his businesses in Sudan
.
Among them was
Karim Said Atmani
who was identified by authorities as the document forger for a
group of Algerians accused of plotting the bombings in the USA. He
is a former roommate of
Ahmed Ressam,
the man arrested at the Canadian-U.S. border in mid-December 1999
with a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials. He was
convicted of colluding with Osama bin Laden by a French court. A
Bosnian government search of passport and residency records,
conducted at the urging of the United States, revealed other former
mujahideen who are linked to the same Algerian group or to other
groups of suspected terrorists who have lived in this area north of
Sarajevo, the capital, in the past few years.
Khalil al-Deek, was arrested in Jordan in
late December 1999 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to blow up
tourist sites; a second man with Bosnian citizenship, Hamid Aich,
lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity
associated with Osama Bin Laden. In its 26 June 1997 Report on the
bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the New
York Times noted that those arrested confessed to serving with
Bosnian Muslims forces. Further, the captured men also admitted to
ties with Osama Bin Laden. In 1999 it was revealed that Osama bin
Laden and his Tunisian assistant Mehrez Aodouni were granted
citizenship and
Bosnian passport in
1993 by the Government in Sarajevo.
This information was denied by Bosnian
government following the 9/11 attacks but it was later found out
that Aodouni was arrested in Turkey
and that at
that time he possessed the Bosnian passport. Following this
revelation new explanation was given that bin Laden "did not
personally collect his Bosnian passport" and that officials at the
Bosnian embassy in Vienna, which issued the passport, could not
have known who bin Laden was at the time. The Bosnian daily
Oslobođenje published in 2001 that
three men, believed linked to be linked to Osama Bin Laden, were
arrested in Sarajevo in July 2001.
The three, one of whom was identified as
Imad El Misri, were Egyptian
nationals. The paper said that two of the
suspects were holding Bosnian passports.
In 1998
it was reported that bin Laden was operating his Al Qaeda network
out of Albania
. The
Charleston Gazette quoted Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence service, as saying a network run
by Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden sent units to fight in the Serbian
province of Kosovo
.
Confirmation of these activities came from Claude Kader, a French
national who said he was a member of Bin Laden's Albanian
network.
By 1998 four members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) were arrested
in Albania extradited to Egypt at the urging of CIA. (It is
believed that the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Africa occurred
as retaliation for these arrest.)
Sudan
Bin Laden
moved to Sudan in 1992 and
established a new base for Mujahideen operations in Khartoum
. Due to bin Laden's continuous verbal
assault on King
Fahd of Saudi
Arabia, on 5 March 1994 Fahd sent an emissary to Sudan
demanding bin Laden's passport. His family was persuaded to cut off
his monthly stipend, the equivalent of
$7 million
a year. By now bin Laden was strongly associated with
Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which
made up the core of al-Qaeda. In 1995 the EIJ
attempted
to assassinate Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak. The attempt failed and the EIJ
was expelled from Sudan.
The
9/11 Commission Report
concludes,
"In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching
officials from the United States and other governments, asking what
actions of theirs might ease foreign pressure.
In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered
to expel bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon
him.
US officials became aware of these secret discussions,
certainly by March.
Saudi officials apparently wanted bin Laden expelled
from Sudan.
They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and
would not tolerate his presence in their country.
Also bin Laden may have no longer felt safe in Sudan,
where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt
that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi
regimes, or both."
The 9/11 Commission Report further states,
"In late 1995, when Bin Laden was still in Sudan, the
State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the
Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin
Laden.
CIA paramilitary officer Billy
Waugh tracked down bin Ladin in the Sudan and prepared an
operation to apprehend him, but was denied
authorization.
US Ambassador Timothy Carney encouraged the Sudanese to
pursue this course.
The Saudis, however, did not want Bin Laden, giving as
their reason their revocation of his citizenship.
Sudan’s minister of defense, Fatih Erwa, has claimed
that Sudan offered to hand Bin Laden over to the United
States.
The Commission has found no credible evidence that this
was so.
Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the
Sudanese to expel Bin Laden.
Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more
from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment
outstanding."
In May
1996, under increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the
United States on Sudan, bin Laden returned to Jalalabad, Afghanistan
aboard a chartered
jet and forged a close relationship with Mullah Mohammed Omar. In Afghanistan, bin
Laden and Al-Qaeda raised money from "donors from the days of the
Soviet jihad", and from
Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI). When Bin Laden left Sudan, he and his organization were
significantly weakened, despite his ambitions and organizational
skills.
Early attacks and aid for attacks
It is
believed that the first bombing attack
involving bin Laden was the 29 December 1992 bombing of the
Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden
in which two
people were killed.
It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have
developed its justification for the killing of innocent people.
According to a fatwa issued by
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of
someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent
bystander will find their proper reward in death, going to
Paradise if they were good Muslims and to
hell if they were bad or non-believers. The fatwa was
issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.
In the
1990s bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially and
sometimes militarily in Algeria
, Egypt and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993 bin
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. Their advice was heeded but
the
war that
followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with Islamist
surrender to the government.
Another effort by bin Laden was the funding
of the Luxor massacre of November 17,
1997
, which killed sixty two civilians, but so revolted
the Egyptian public that it turned against Islamist terror.
In
mid-1997, the Northern
Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing Bin Laden to abandon his Nazim Jihad compound and move his operations to
Tarnak
Farms
in the south.
A later
effort that did succeed was an attack on the city of Mazar-e-Sharif
in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his
alliance with his hosts the Taliban by sending several hundred of
his Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between
five and six thousand
Hazaras overrunning the
city.
In 1998, Osama bin Laden and
Ayman
al-Zawahiri co-signed a
fatwa in the name of the
World
Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders which
declared the killing of
the North Americans and their allies an
"individual duty for every Muslim" to "liberate the al-Aqsa
Mosque
(in Jerusalem
) and the holy mosque (in
Mecca
) from their grip". At the public
announcement of the fatwa bin Laden announced that North Americans
are "very easy targets." He told the attending
journalists, "You will see the results of this in
a very short time."
At the
end of 2000, Richard Clarke
revealed that Islamic militants headed by bin Laden had planned a
triple attack on January 3,
2000 which would have included bombings in Jordan
of the
Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman
and
tourists at Mount
Nebo
and a site on the Jordan River
, the sinking of the destroyer USS The Sullivans in Yemen
, as well as
an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was
foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking
of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and
the arrest of
Ahmed Ressam.
September 11, 2001 attacks
After initial denial, in 2004 Osama bin Laden claimed
responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United
States.
The attacks involved the hijacking of
United
Airlines Flight 93
, United
Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 11, and
American Airlines Flight
77; the subsequent destruction of those planes and the World Trade
Center
in New York
City, New
York
; severe damage to The Pentagon
in Arlington, Virginia
; and the deaths of 2,974 people excluding the
nineteen
hijackers.
*
*
*
*
*
* In response to the attacks, the United
States launched a War on Terrorism
to depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
and capture al-Qaeda operatives, and several
countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation to preclude
future attacks. The CIA's
Special Activities Division was
given the lead in tracking down and killing or capturing bin
Laden.
The
Federal
Bureau of Investigation has stated that evidence linking Al-Qaeda and bin
Laden to the attacks of September 11 is clear and
irrefutable. The
Government of the United Kingdom
reached the same conclusion regarding Al Qaeda and Osama bin
Laden's culpability for the September 11, 2001, attacks.Bin Laden
initially denied involvement in the
September 11, 2001 attacks.
On 16
September 2001, bin Laden read a statement later broadcast by
Qatar
's Al Jazeera satellite
channel denying responsibility for the attack.
In a
videotape recovered by US forces in November 2001 in Jalalabad
, bin Laden was seen discussing the attack with
Khaled al-Harbi in a way that
indicates foreknowledge. The tape was broadcast on various
news networks on 13 December 2001. The merits of this translation
have been disputed. Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini stated: "This
translation is very problematic. At the most important places where
it is held to prove the guilt of bin Laden, it is not identical
with the Arabic."
In the
2004 Osama bin Laden
video, bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past
statements. In it he stated he had personally directed the nineteen
hijackers. In the 18-minute tape, played on Al-Jazeera, four days
before the American presidential election, bin Laden accused U.S.
President George W. Bush of negligence on the hijacking of the
planes on September 11.
According to the tapes, bin Laden claimed he was inspired to
destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of
towers in Lebanon by Israel during the
1982 Lebanon War.
In two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden
announces,
I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers … I was
responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers … with the raids
[5 minute audiotape broadcast 23 May 2006],
and is seen with
Ramzi Binalshibh,
as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers,
Hamza al-Ghamdi and
Wail al-Shehri, as they make preparations for
the attacks (videotape broadcast 7 September 2006).
Justification of terrorist acts
According to critics of Islam such as
Robert Spencer, who claims Osama Bin Laden
used the
caravan raids in which
prophet
Muhammad is reported to have took
part in to justify his acts of terror.
Many critics of
Islam claim that these raids
were terrorist attacks and highway roberries which promoted
terrorism, they were very controversial especially because in some
of the raids(
battle of waddan)
Muhammad allowed the killing of children, if it were
accidental.
Another cause of controversy is when a non muslim non combatant was
killed. Muhammad intially condemned the killing of the non
combatant. But then a new verse was revealed to him in which it was
said:Persecution is worse than killing. .
Reffering
to how muslims were persecuted in Mecca, suggesting
that the persecution of the muslims is worse than the killing of
the non combatant who was killed by his companions in the Nakhla raid. Hereby justifying the
actions of his followers who were relieved by what he said.
Critics
of Islam such as Robert Spencer claim
that it was because of these raids that Osama bin Laden justified the killings of
Americans because muslims were being persecuted (in many countries
e.g Israel) and
America
was one of the persecuters, and "persecution is
worse than killing".So Bin Laden hereby justified the killing of
non combatants in his speeches.
However, the way Al-Qaeda has justified the killing of non
combatants has been condemned by influential group of Pakistani
scholars and religious leaders, see
#View of Muslim Clerics.
Some scholars such as
Yusuf
al-Qaradawi have the view that killing non combatants and
suicide attacks is allowed (as long
as they are not commiting suicide out of despair), only if the
target is percieved as enemies of Islam.
Criminal charges
On 16
March 1998, Libya
issued the
first official international Interpol
arrest warrant
against Bin Laden and three other people for killing two German
citizens in
Libya on 10 March 1994, one of which is thought to have been a
German counter-intelligence
officer. Bin Laden is still wanted by the
Libyan government.
Osama bin Laden was
first indicted by the United States on 8 June 1998, when a grand jury indicted Osama bin Laden on charges of
killing five Americans and two Indians
in the 14 November 1995 truck bombing of a
US-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh.
Bin Laden was charged with "conspiracy to attack defense utilities
of the United States" and 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 fighters
worldwide. Bin Laden denied involvement but praised the attack. On
November 4, 1998, 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 US Nationals Outside the
United States, Conspiracy to Murder US Nationals Outside the United
States, and Attacks on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death
for his alleged role in the
1998 United States embassy
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The evidence against bin Laden
included courtroom testimony by former Al Qaeda members and
satellite phone records.
Bin Laden
became the 456th
person listed on the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's Ten Most
Wanted Fugitives list, when he was added to the list on 7 June
1999, following his indictment along with others for capital crimes in the 1998 embassy
attacks. Attempts at assassination and requests for the
extradition of bin Laden from the
Taliban of
Afghanistan were met with failure prior to the bombing of
Afghanistan in October 2001. In 1999, US President
Bill Clinton convinced the
United Nations to impose sanctions against
Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.
Years later, 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 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 latter list for questioning about the
1998 embassy bombings. Bin Laden remains the only fugitive ever to
be listed on both FBI fugitive lists.
Despite the multiple indictments listed above and multiple
requests, the Taliban refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden. It
wasn't until after the bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001
that the Taliban finally did offer to turn over Osama bin Laden to
a third-party country for trial, in return for the US ending the
bombing and providing evidence that Osama bin Laden was involved in
the 9/11 attacks. This offer was rejected by George W Bush stating
that this was no longer negotiable with Bush responding that
"There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's
guilty."
Attempted capture by the United States
US leaflet used in Afghanistan.
Clinton Administration
Capturing Osama bin Laden has been an objective of the United
States government since the presidency of
Bill Clinton. Shortly after the
September 11 attacks it was revealed
that President Clinton had signed a directive authorizing the
CIA (and specifically their elite
Special Activities Division) to
apprehend bin Laden and bring him to the United States to stand
trial after the
1998
United States embassy bombings in Africa; if taking bin Laden
alive was deemed impossible, then deadly force was authorized.
On August
20, 1998, 66 cruise missiles launched by United States Navy ships
in the Arabian
Sea
struck bin Laden's training camps near Khost
in
Afghanistan, narrowly missing him by a few hours. In
1999 the CIA, together with Pakistani military
intelligence, had prepared a team of approximately 60 Pakistani
commandos to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden,
but the plan was aborted by the
1999 Pakistani coup d'état;
in
2000, foreign operatives working on behalf
of the
CIA had fired a
rocket-propelled grenade at a
convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through the
mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the
one bin Laden was in.
In 2000, prior to the September 11 attacks,
Paul Bremer characterized the Clinton
administration as "correctly focused on bin Laden", while
Robert Oakley criticized their "obsession with
Osama".
Bush Administration
According to
The Washington
Post, the US government concluded that Osama bin Laden was
present during the
Battle of Tora
Bora, Afghanistan in late 2001, and according to civilian and
military officials with first-hand knowledge, failure by the US to
commit US ground troops to hunt him led to his escape and was the
gravest failure by the US in the war against al Qaeda. Intelligence
officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence,
from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted
communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside
the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern
border.
The Washington Post also reported that the
CIA unit composed of their
special operations paramilitary forces dedicated to capturing Osama
was shut down in late 2005.
US and
Afghanistan forces raided the mountain caves in Tora Bora
between 14–16 August 2007. The military was
drawn to the area after receiving intelligence of a pre-
Ramadan meeting held by al Qaeda members. After
killing dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban members, they did not find
either Osama bin Laden or
Ayman al
Zawahiri.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks,
US government
officials named bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda organization as the
prime
suspects and offered a reward of $25
million for information leading to his capture or death. On 13 July
2007, this figure was doubled to $50 million.
The
Airline Pilots
Association and the
Air
Transport Association are offering an additional $2 million
reward.
Current whereabouts
Claims as to the location of Osama bin Laden have been made since
December 2001, although none have been definitively proven and some
have placed Osama in different locations during overlapping time
periods.
An 11
December 2005, letter from Atiyah
Abd al-Rahman to Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi indicates that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership
were based in the Waziristan region of
Pakistan
at the time. In the letter, translated by the United
States military's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
, "Atiyah" instructs Zarqawi to "send messengers
from your end to Waziristan so that they meet with the brothers of
the leadership … I am now on a visit to them and I am writing you
this letter as I am with them…" Al-Rahman also indicates that bin
Laden and al-Qaeda are "weak" and "have many of their own
problems." The letter has been deemed authentic by military
and counterterrorism officials, according to
the Washington
Post.
In 2009 a research team led by Thomas W. Gillespie and
John A. Agnew of
UCLA
used satellite-aided geographical analysis to
pinpoint three compounds in Parachinar
as likely hideouts of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
In March
2009, the New York Daily
News reported that the hunt for bin Laden had centered in
the Chitral
district
of Pakistan, including the Kalam Valley. According to the report,
author
Rohan Gunaratna states that
captured Al Qaeda leaders have confirmed that Chitral is where bin
Laden is hiding.
Reports of his death
December 2001 Quoting an unnamed Taliban official,
the
Pakistan Observer reported that Bin Laden died of
untreated lung complications and was buried in an unmarked grave in
Tora Bora on December 15. This report was picked up by Fox News in
the United States on December 26. Also on December 26, the Egyptian
newspaper
AlWafd - Daily carried a
short
obituary by a
prominent
official of the Afghan Taliban, who was allegedly present at
the funeral, stating Bin Laden had been buried on or about December
13:
"(Osama bin Laden) suffered serious complications and
died a natural, quiet death.
He was buried in Tora Bora, a funeral attended by 30 Al
Qaeda fighters, close members of his family and friends from the
Taliban.
By the Wahhabi tradition, no mark was left on the
grave"
A videotape was released on December 27 showing a gaunt, unwell Bin
Laden, prompting an unnamed White House aide to comment that it
could have been made shortly before his death. On CNN, Dr Sanjay
Gupta commented that Bin Laden's left arm never moved during the
video, suggesting a recent stroke and possibly a symptom of kidney
failure. According to Pakistani President Musharraf, Bin Laden
required two dialysis machines, which also suggests kidney failure.
"I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a... kidney
patient," Musharraf said. If Bin Laden suffered kidney failure, he
would require a sterile environment, electricity, and continuous
attention by a team of specialists, Gupta said. In April 2002, U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated, "We have heard neither
hide nor hair of him since, oh, about December in terms of anything
hard....We are pretty sure he is either alive or dead." FBI
Counterterrorism chief Dale Watson and President Karzai of
Afghanistan also expressed the opinion that Bin Laden probably died
at this time.
April 2005: The
Sydney Morning Herald
stated "Dr Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the
Australian National
University
, says documents provided by an Indian colleague
suggested bin Laden died of massive organ failure in April last
year … 'It's hard to prove or disprove these things because there
hasn't really been anything that allows you to make a judgment one
way or the other,' Dr. Williams said."
Late 2005 CIA disbands "Alec Station", unit
dedicated to Bin Laden.
September 2006: On 23
September 2006, the French newspaper L'Est Républicain quoted a
report from the French secret service (Direction générale de la sécurité
extérieure
, DGSE) stating that Osama bin Laden had died in
Pakistan on 23 August 2006, after contracting a case of typhoid fever that paralyzed his lower
limbs. According to the newspaper, Saudi security services
first heard of bin Laden's alleged death on 4 September
2006.
The
alleged death was reported by the Saudi Arabian secret service to its government, which reported it
to the French secret service. The French defense minister
Michèle Alliot-Marie
expressed her regret that the report had been published while
French President
Jacques Chirac declared that bin
Laden's death had not been confirmed.
American authorities also cannot confirm reports of bin
Laden's death, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying only, "No comment,
and no knowledge." Later, CNN's Nic Robertson said that he
had received confirmation from an anonymous Saudi source that the
Saudi intelligence community has known for a while that bin Laden
has a
water-borne illness, but
that he had heard no reports that it was specifically typhoid or
that he had died.
November 2007: In an
interview with political interviewer David
Frost taken on 2 November 2007, the Pakistani politician and Pakistan Peoples Party chairwoman
Benazir Bhutto claimed that bin Laden
had been murdered by Omar
Sheikh. During her answer to a question pertaining to
the identities of those who had previously attempted her own
assassination, Bhutto named Sheikh as a possible suspect while
referring to him as "the man who murdered Osama bin Laden." Despite
the weight of such a statement, neither Bhutto nor Frost attempted
to clarify it during the remainder of the interview. Omar
Chatriwala, a journalist for Al Jazeera English, claims that he
chose not to pursue the story at the time because he believes
Bhutto misspoke, meaning to say Sheikh murdered
Daniel Pearl and not Osama Bin Laden. The
BBC drew criticism when it rebroadcast the
Frost/Bhutto interview on its website, but edited out Bhutto's
statement regarding Osama Bin Laden. Later the BBC apologized and
replaced the
edited version with the
complete interview. In October 2007, Bhutto stated in
an interview that she would cooperate with the American military in
targeting Osama bin Laden.
March 2009: In an essay
published in The American
Spectator in March 2009, international relations professor
Angelo Codevilla of Boston University
argued that Osama bin Laden had been dead for many
years.
October 2009: An article in the
conservative Daily
Mail points out that the theory that Bin Laden died in 2001 "is
gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics
and even terror experts" and notes that the mounting evidence that
supports the claim makes the theory "worthy of examination".
Criticism
Salafist Muslims have criticized bin Laden
for adherence to
Qutbism (the ideology of
Sayyid Qutb),
takfir and
Khaarijite
deviance. Critics are said to include Muhammad Ibn Haadee
al-Madkhalee,
Abd-al-Aziz ibn Abd-Allah ibn
Baaz, Shaykh Saalih al-Fawzaan and
Muqbil bin Haadi
al-Waadi'ee.
See also
Footnotes
References
- Peter L. Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know: New York:
Free Press, 2006
- Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies' Eyes,
Washington, D.C. : Brassey's, c2002
- Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower : Al-Qaeda And The Road
To 9/11, New York : Knopf, 2006.
External links
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