Osama bin Laden
- This article is about Osama bin Laden. For the Saudi Family, see Bin Laden family.
Usāmah bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Lādin (Template:Lang-ar; born March 10, 1957 [1]), most commonly known as Osama bin Laden or Usama bin Laden (أسامة بن لادن) is a militant Islamist and also the founder of the al-Qaeda Islamist paramilitary organization. Bin Laden is a member of the prestigious and wealthy bin Laden family and issued a 1998 edict that Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel in the United States and allied countries until they withdraw their forces from Muslim countries[2].
He has been indicted in United States federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and for these charges he is currently on the list of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. He has also been linked to the 2000 USS Cole bombing, the Bali nightclub bombings, the Madrid bombings, as well as bombings in the Jordanian capital of Amman and in Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda supported and allegedly directed a number of violent attacks worldwide, including the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93, which together killed at least 2,986 people. Bin Laden, while under indictment in the U.S. for many charges, has not been indicted for his alleged role in the attacks of 9/11.
Background
Family and childhood
Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [3]. In a 1998 interview, later televised on Al Jazeera, he gave his birth date as March 10, 1957. His father was the late Muhammed Awad bin Laden, a wealthy businessman involved in construction and with close ties to the Saudi royal family [4]. Before World War I, Muhammed, originally poor and uneducated, emigrated from Hadhramaut, on the south coast of Yemen, to the Red Sea port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he began to work as a porter. Starting his own business in 1930, Muhammed built his fortune as a building contractor for the Saudi royal family during the 1950s. Although it had distanced itself from their brother and former company employee, The Saudi Binladin Group's corporate website, [1], expired on September 11, 2001, the same day as the attacks in the United States. [2].
There is no definitive account of the number of children born to Muhammed bin Laden, but the number is generally put at 55. In addition, various accounts place Osama as his seventeenth son. Muhammed bin Laden was married 22 times, although to no more than four women at a time per Sharia law. Osama was born the only son of Muhammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas, nee Alia Ghanem[5], who was born in Syria [6].
al-Attas step family in Jeddah
Osama's parents divorced soon after he was born, according to Khaled M. Batarfi, a senior editor at the Al Madina newspaper in Jeddah who knew Osama during the 1970s. Osama's mother then married a man named Muhammad al-Attas, who worked at the bin Laden company. The couple had four children, and Osama lived in the new household with three stepbrothers and one stepsister. [7]
Bin laden was raised as a devout Sunni Muslim. But from 1968 to 1976, he attended the relatively secular Al-Thager Model School, the most prestigious high school in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, called "the school of the élite." [8] However, during the 1960s, King Faisal had welcomed exiled teachers from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, so that around 1971 or 1972, at Saudi high schools and universities, it was common to find many of whom had become involved with dissident members of the Muslim Brotherhood. During that time, bin Laden was exposed to those educators' banned political teachings during after-school Islamic study groups.
As a college student at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, bin Laden studied civil engineering and business administration. He earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979 and also one in economics and public administration, in 1981.
At the university, bin Laden was influenced by several professors with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Among them was Muhammad Qutb, an Egyptian, whose brother, the late Sayyid Qutb, had written one of the Brotherhood’s most important tracts about anti-Western jihad, "Signposts on the Road." The university at Jeddah is also where bin Laden met Dr. Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. Azzam was a teacher there while bin Laden was in attendance, and he would later play a crucial role working with bin Laden in the Afghanistan resistance against the Soviets.
Married life in Jeddah
In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married his first wife, Najwa Ghanem, his mother's niece, and a first cousin, who was from Syria. The marriage ceremony took place in Najwa's native land, at Latakia, in northwestern Syria. [9] After the birth of his first son, Abdallah, they moved from his mother's house to a building in the Al-Aziziyah district of Jeddah.
Although Bin Laden reportedly married four other women, he divorced one, Umm Ali bin Laden (i.e., the mother of Ali), a university lecturer, who studied in Saudi Arabia, and spent holidays in Khartoum, Sudan, where Osama later settled during his exile in the years 1991 to 1996. According to Wisal al Turabi, the wife of Sudan's ruler Hassan Turabi, Umm Ali taught Islam to some families in Riyadh, an upscale neighborhood in Khartoum. The three latter wives of Osama bin Laden were all university lecturers, highly educated, and from distinguished families. According to Wisal al Turabi, he married the other three because they were "spinsters," who "were going to go without marrying in this world. So he married them for the Word of God." According to Abu Jandal, bin Laden's former chief bodyguard, Osama's wife Umm Ali asked Osama for a divorce when they still lived in Sudan, because she said that she "could not continue to live in an austere way and in hardship." [9]
Children
Bin Laden has fathered at least 24 children. His wife, Najwa reportedly had 11 children by bin Laden, including Abdallah (born c. 1976), Omar, Saad and Muhammad. Muhammad bin Laden (born c. 1983) married the daughter of the late al-Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef in January 2001, at Kandahar, Afghanistan. Omar and Abdallah reportedly organized the U.S. branch of the World Congress of Muslim Youth in Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s. Abdallah runs his own firm, called Fame Advertising, which has offices near a Starbucks in a two-story strip mall on the busy Palestine Street, in Jeddah.
In 1994 bin Laden's family publicly disowned him, shortly before the Saudi Arabian government revoked his citizenship for anti-government activity. He attended his son's wedding in January 2001, but since September 11, he is believed only to have had contact with his mother on one occasion. [10].
Appearance and manner
Bin Laden is often described as lanky; the FBI describes him as tall and thin, being 6' 4" (193 cm) to 6' 5" (195 cm) tall and weighing about 160 pounds (75 kg). He has an olive complexion, is left-handed, and usually walks with a cane. He wears a plain white turban and no longer dons the traditional Saudi male headdress. [11]
In terms of personality, Bin Laden is described as a soft-spoken, mild mannered man, [12]; and despite his rhetoric, he is said to be charming, polite, and respectful. According to CNN's In The Footsteps of bin Laden television program, he is near-fluent in the English language.
Usage variations of Osama's name
Osama's name is transliterated in many ways. Osama bin Laden is used by most English-language mass media. The FBI and Fox News use Usama bin Laden, which is often abbreviated to UBL. Less common renderings include Ussamah Bin Ladin and Oussama Ben Laden (French-language mass media). The latter part of the name can also be found as Binladen or Binladin.
Strictly speaking, under Arabic linguistic conventions, it is incorrect to use "bin Laden" in a similar manner as a Western surname. His full name means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of 'Awad, 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. Although Arabic conventions dictate that he be referred to 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.
Bin Laden also has several commonly used aliases and nicknames, including the Prince, the Sheikh, Al-Amir, Abu Abdallah, Sheikh Al-Mujahid, the Director, and Samaritan.[13].
Military and militant activity
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1979 was a pivotal year for Islamic fundamentalism, with three huge events in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was connected, at least indirectly, to the latter two of them. First, on January 16, 1979 the Iranian Revolution began with the forced exile of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which then brought about the world's first modern Muslim theocracy under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Second, a half-brother of Osama was implicated in the November 20, 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure at Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam. The hostage-taking, two week siege, and bloody ending shocked the Muslim world, as hundreds were killed in the ensuing battles and executions. The event was explained as a fundamentalist dissident revolt against the Saudi regime. The Iran hostage crisis had begun only weeks earlier, on November 4, 1979 when a mob of students stormed and seized the U.S. embassy. Immediately following the Mecca event, Iran blamed the U.S., and angry Islamic mobs then burned two more U.S. embassies to the ground, in Islamabad, Pakistan, and at Tripoli, Libya. And then in the third major event of the year, on December 25, 1979 the Soviet Union, attempting to suppress an Islamic rebellion, deployed the 40th Army into Afghanistan, in support of advisers it already had in place there.
Afghan Jihad resisting the Soviet invasion
Bin Laden's wealth and connections assisted his interest in supporting the mujahideen, Muslim guerrillas fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. By 1980, his old teacher from the university in Jeddah, Abdullah Azzam, had relocated to Peshawar, a major border city of a million people in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. From there, Azzam was able to organize resistance directly on the Afghan frontier. Peshawar is only 15 km east of the historic Khyber Pass, through the Safed Koh mountains, connected to the southeastern edge of the Hindu Kush range. This route became the major avenue of inserting foreign fighters and material support into eastern Afghanistan for the resistance against the Soviets, and also in later years.
After bin Laden graduated from the university in Jeddah in 1981, he also came to live for a time in Peshawar, according to Rahimullah Yusufzai, executive editor of the English-language daily The News International in 2001. "Azam prevailed on him to come and use his money" for training recruits, reported Yusufzai. [14] In the early 1980s, bin Laden lived at several addresses in and around Arbab Road, a narrow street in the University Town neighborhood in western Peshawar, Yusufzai said. Nearby in Gulshan Iqbal Road is the Arab mosque that Abdullah Azzam used as the jihad center, according to a Reuters inquiry in the neighborhood. Years later, in 1989, Azzam was blown up in a massive car bombing outside the mosque. Bin Laden is thought to be a suspect in that assassination, because of a rift in the direction of the jihad at that time.
By 1984, with Azzam, bin Laden 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. 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. In running al-Khadamat, bin Laden set up a network of couriers traveling between Afghanistan and Peshawar, which continued to remain active after 2001, according to Yusufzai.
(See: the History of Afghanistan).
Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005,
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.[15]
However, Peter Bergen, a CNN journalist and adjunct professor who is known for conducting the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997, refuted Cook's notion, stating on August 15, 2006, the following:
The story about bin Laden and the CIA -- that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden -- is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.[16]
For a while Osama worked at the Services Office working with Abdallah Azzam on Jihad Magazine, a magazine that gave information about the war with the soviets and interviewed mujahideen. As time passed, Aymen Al Zawahiri encouraged Osama to split away from Abdallah Azzam. Osama formed his own army of mujahideen and fought the soviets. One of his most significant battles was the battle of Jaji, which was not a major fight, but it earned him a reputation as a fighter.
Formation of al-Qaeda
By 1988, bin Laden had split from the MAK based on strategic differences. While Azzam and his MAK organization acted as support for the Afghan fighters and provided relief to refugees and injured, bin Laden wanted a more military role in which the Arab fighters would not only be trained and equipped by the organization but also be commanded on the battlefield by Arabic. One of the main leading point 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. [17]
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered to help defend Saudi Arabia (with 12,000 armed men) but was rebuffed by the Saudi government. Bin Laden publicly denounced his government's dependence on the U.S. military and demanded an end to the presence of foreign military bases in the country. 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 upset Muslims because the Saudi government claims legitimacy based on their role as guardians of the sacred Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina. After the Gulf War cease-fire agreement left Saddam Hussein remaining in power in Iraq, the ongoing presence of long-term bases for non-Muslim U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia continued to undermine the Saudi rulers' perceived legitimacy and inflamed anti-government Islamist militants, including bin Laden. Bin Laden's increasingly strident criticisms of the Saudi monarchy led the government to expel him to Sudan in 1991. Bin Laden was accepted in Sudan by the ruling National Islamic Front (NIF), which may have hoped he could aid them through his wealth and construction company.
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 for mujahideen operations in Khartoum, 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 NIF government figure Hassan al Turabi. While in Sudan, bin Laden married one of Turabi's nieces.
Refuge in Afghanistan
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Sudanese officials, whose government was under international sanctions offered to extradite bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s. However, Saudi Arabia refused because of the political difficulties of accepting such a controversial figure into their custody. Consequently, in May 1996, under increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States, Sudan expelled bin Laden to Afghanistan. He chartered a plane and flew to Kabul before settling in Jalalabad after being invited by leading Afghan Mujahedin figure, Abdul Rasuul Sayyaf. 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 November 1997 Luxor massacre, 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.
Attacks on United States targets
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It is believed that Bin Laden's first strike against United States citizens was the December 29, 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden, Yemen, which killed a Yemeni hotel employee and an Austrian national and seriously injured the Austrian's wife. About 100 U.S. soldiers, part of Operation Restore Hope, had been staying at the hotel for two weeks but had left two days earlier for Somalia. U.S. investigations have allegedly established financial and logistical links between bin Laden and Ramzi Yousef, prime suspect of the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Bin Laden is also connected to the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu that killed 18 U.S. troops in Somalia and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar military complex in Saudi Arabia that left 21 U.S. soldiers dead.
It is widely believed that Al-Qaeda was responsible for plots in Asia orchestrated by Ramzi Yousef, who was later arrested in Pakistan, brought to the United States and convicted in November 1997 for masterminding the World Trade Center bombing. The plots in Asia, including those to assassinate the Pope, during his late 1994 visit to the Philippines, and President Clinton, during his visit there in early 1995, all failed; also included among the plots were those to bomb the US and Israeli embassies in Manila in late 1994 and to bomb US flights across the Pacific in 1995. Bin Laden and the Indonesian militant, known as Hambali, allegedly funded, then aborted the Operation Bojinka conspiracy when police discovered the plot in Manila, Philippines, on January 6, 1995.
In 1998, Osama 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:
[t]he 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'. [18]
In response to the 1998 United States embassy bombings following the fatwa, 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. launched an attack using cruise missiles. The attack failed to harm bin Laden but killed 19 other people.
On November 4, 1998, Osama bin Laden was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury and the U.S. offered a US $25 million reward for information leading to bin Laden's apprehension or conviction.
The September 11, 2001 Attacks
Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, U.S. government officials named bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization as the prime suspects.
Criminal charges and attempted extradition
On June 8, 1998 a United States grand jury indicted Osama Bin Laden on charges of killing five Americans and two Indians in the 13 November 1995 truck bombing of a US-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh[19]. 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 terrorists worldwide.[19] 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 U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, and Attacks on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death[3] 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 [4][5]. Attempts at assassination and requests for the extradition of Bin Laden from the Taliban of Afghanistan were met with failure[6]. In 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton convinced the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him. The U.S. Department of State currently offers a $25 million reward for information leading directly to his apprehension or conviction [7].
Current whereabouts
Claims of sightings of Osama bin Laden have been made since December 2001, however these sources are typically not verifiable, and have at times placed Osama in different locations during overlapping time periods.
Osama Bin Laden is often stated to be residing within fortified caves in the rugged Tora Bora region that straddles the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The latest reported claim regarding his location occurred on May 24,2006, when ABC News reported about rumors that Bin Laden was sighted in the Kumrat Valley in the Kohistan District of Pakistan. [8]. The region is 40 miles east of the Afghan–Pakistani border. Claims have been made that Osama Bin Laden may be hiding somewhere in the Chitral area.
On July 3, 2006, it was reported that late 2005 the CIA closed a unit called Alec Station dedicated to the search for and capture of Osama Bin Laden. According to the New York Times, Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit, said the move reflected a view within the agency that "Mr. Bin Laden" was no longer the threat he once was. [9]
See also
- Worldwide perception of Osama bin Laden
- al-Qaeda
- Ayman al-Zawahiri
- bin Laden family
- Clearstream scandal (Bin Laden's Bahrain International Bank used this clearing house for its financial activities).
- Ladenese epistle
- Islamic fundamentalism
- Islamist terrorism
- Islamofascism
- Mujahideen
- Saleh Abdullah Kamel
- Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- Taliban Movement
- FBI Most Wanted Terrorists
- 1998 United States embassy bombings
- 2000 USS Cole bombing
- September 11, 2001 attacks
- 2002 Bali bombing
- 2004 Madrid train bombings
- 2005 London Bombings
Video and audiotapes
Video and audiotapes which are said to be from Osama bin Laden:
Some commentators have alleged inconsistent appearance / audio signatures of Osama Bin Laden in these tapes.[citation needed]
References
- ^ "Wanted: Usama Bin Laden". Interpol. Retrieved 2006-05-15.
- ^ "Online NewsHour: Al Qaeda's 1998 Fatwa". PBS. Retrieved 2006-08-21.
- ^ "frontline: hunting bin laden: who is bin laden?: chronology". PBS. Retrieved 2006-08-21.
- ^ "Osama bin Laden infoplease". Infoplease. Retrieved 2006-08-21.
- ^ Letter From Jedda, Young Osama, How he learned radicalism, and may have seen America, by Steve Coll, The New Yorker Fact, Issue of 2005-12-12, Posted 2005-12-05
- ^ "Salon.com News - The making of Osama bin Laden". Salon.com. Retrieved 2006-08-21.
- ^ Letter From Jedda, Young Osama, How he learned radicalism, and may have seen America, by Steve Coll, The New Yorker Fact, Issue of 2005-12-12, Posted 2005-12-05
- ^ [quote from Saleha Abedin, a longtime Jeddah educator, now a vice-dean of Jeddah's Dar Al-Hekma College, a private women’s college], The New Yorker Fact, Issue of 2005-12-12
- ^ a b The Real bin Laden, an Oral History, pg. 2 of 9, VanityFair.com
- ^ "Who is Osama Bin Laden?". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-05-15.
- ^ "Most Wanted Terrorist - Usama Bin Laden". FBI. Retrieved 2006-06-08.
- ^ "'I met Osama Bin Laden'". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-05-15.
- ^ "Most Wanted Terrorist - Usama Bin Laden". FBI. Retrieved 2006-08-26.
- ^ Rahimullah Yusufzai, executive editor of the English-language daily The News International, in a statement to Reuters in Peshawar on December 29, 2001. Yusufzai met bin Laden twice in Afghanistan in 1998.
- ^ Cook, Robin. "The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2005-07-08.
- ^ "Bergen: Bin Laden, CIA links hogwash". CNN. Retrieved 2006-08-15.
{{cite web}}
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- ^ "Text of Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans". Retrieved 2006-05-15.
- ^ a b Frontline ([2001?]). ""Osama bin Laden: A Chronology of His Political Life"". Hunting bin Laden: Who Is bin Laden?. WGBH Educational Foundation. Retrieved 2006-07-25.
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External links
- Reward for Osama's Capture
- Identifying Misinformation US government denial of CIA connection
- "Main Columns of the Osame Bin Laden Ideology"
- "Listening to Bin Laden" by Said Shirazi, an analysis of his collected speeches.
- Osama Bin Laden Videos
Profiles
- FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives poster
- FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists poster
- BBC News: 'I met Osama bin Laden' - March 26 2004 - a short profile of bin Laden's life
- Interpol Profile
- Who Is Osama bin Laden? - By Michel Chossudovsky
- New Yorker article on Osama's youth
Other
- "Main Columns of the Usame Bin Laden Ideology", Journal of Turkish Weekly
- Al Qaeda's Evolution, March 2005
- Does Bin Laden still control Al Qaeda?, March 2006
- About.com's Is Osama bin Laden Dead?
- BBC News News about a new audio recording of Osama on the BBC UK website. Thursday, 19 January 2006
- CBC News video interview with Bruce Lawrence, editor of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (2005, ISBN 1-84467-045-7) from CBC News: The Hour, November 21 2005
- Fatwa from World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders - Statement from bin Laden, 23 February 1998
- BBC:Transcript of Osama bin Laden video aired by al-Jazeera
- Deborah Amos "Interview: Osama Bin Laden: The World's Most Wanted Man" January 30, 2006 Council on Foreign Relations
- Osama bin Laden at the Internet Movie Database
- Al-Watan al-'Arabi report from 1998 translated by Foreign Broadcast Information Service
- Emerson, S. (2002), American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, Free Press; ISBN 0-7432-3324-7.
- Coll, Steve (2004), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10 2001, Penguin Press; ISBN 1-59420-007-6.
- Randal, Jonathan. Osama: The Making of a Terrorist. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-84511-117-6.
- Guardian article about the difficulty of romanizing Arabic, i.e., Usama vs. Osama
- Robin Cook The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means The Guardian, July 8, 2005
- [10] Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton (Crown, Sept 1, 2006)