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Osama bin Laden (born July 30?, 1957), full name Sheikh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Awad Bin-Ladin (the name can be transliterated in several ways, including Usama bin Laden (as used by the FBI) Ussamah Bin Ladin, Oussama Ben Laden; also ibn Laden and Binladen) is a relatively wealthy Saudi Arabian-born Islamist leader, and head of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization.

Osama Bin Laden also has several aliases, including The Prince, The Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, and The Director.

The United States government named him as the prime suspect ultimately responsible for the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack, which killed 3062 people and prompted the United States' "War on Terror". Bin Laden has denied this accusation, though he has expressed admiration for whoever was responsible. Because of this charge, the United States asked the Taliban government of Afghanistan to unconditionally extradite Bin Laden. After they refused, the United States invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban. In December, 2001 the US state department released what it described as direct evidence of his involvement: a 'home video' of Osama bin Laden purportedly found in Afghanistan and apparently showing that bin Laden had foreknowledge of the September 11th attacks (for more, see videos of bin Laden).

Bin Laden is also 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, in which over 200 people died. Due to this incident, he is on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.

Bin Laden's status among his family

Osama bin Laden has been disowned by his family (who use the English spelling Binladin). Despite these moves, some of his relatives say he continues to receive financial support from his family (See external links below).

Bin Laden's Personal History

Bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1957, the 17th of 52 children of Muhammad bin Laden, a wealthy man involved in construction and with close ties to the royal family of Saudi Arabia. His family originally came from Yemen. He was raised as a devout Muslim and in interviews he frequently invokes Allah. 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 as 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 $300 million; more recent estimates put his holdings at about $25 million.

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 in 1979. (See the History of Afghanistan.) By 1984 he was running a front organization called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), which funneled money, arms and fighters into the Afghan war. MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the United States Central Intelligence Agency's primary mechanism for the covert conduct of war against the Soviet occupation. By 1988, Bin Laden had split from the MAK and established a new guerilla group, dubbed al-Qaida, which included many of the more militant MAK members he had met in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989.

Bin Laden was lauded as a hero in Saudi Arabia, but during the Gulf War against Iraq he was critical of Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military and demanded that all foreigners leave the country. It was the U.S. support of what he viewed to be a corrupt, materialist, and irreligious Saudi monarchy that turned him against the United States. He began to criticize the monarchy and was forced to flee to Sudan in 1991, where he set up a new base of operations. With the assistance of false charities such as Benevolence International and such as those started by Bin Laden's brother in law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Bin Laden was able to expand the group's focus and send group members to Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States. Bin Laden lost his Saudi citizenship in 1994 after he admitted his involvement in terrorist attacks in Riyadh and Dahran.

In 1996 Sudan made repeated overtures to the United States to extradite bin Laden, arrest him, monitor him, and/or provide intelligence on the activities of him and his associates, but the Clinton administration never accepted their offers. In May 1996 bin Laden was expelled from Sudan. He then headed for Afghanistan, where he had a close relationship with some of the leaders of the Taliban government which had taken control in 1996. The 1997 Luxor tourist massacres in Egypt are believed to have been financed by bin Laden.

Also in 1998, he was a co-signatory with Ayman Zawahiri (formerly of Egyptian Islamic Jihad) to a fatwa, or religious/legal edict, put out 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 Mecca 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." (statement linked below)

U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered his assets frozen in 1998, but none were ever found. Clinton also admits authorizing bin Laden's arrest and/or assassination while in office; one assassination attempt with cruise missiles in August 1998 failed, while killing 19 other people. The U.S. never apologized for these killings, since the attack was directed at what they considered to be a meeting of terrorists. The U.S. offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his 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. (Yet compare Sudan supra.)

The UN Security Council, on January 16, 2002, unanimously established an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and the remaining Taliban.

His current location is unknown. Attempts to locate him in Afghanistan during the US military campaign in Afghanistan failed.

The United States military has reported that bin Laden is believed to be suffering from a kidney disorder, requiring him to have access to a doctor and medical facilities. The French daily Le Figaro (2001 October 31) insists Osama had treatment—probably for this kidney problem—at the American hospital in Dubai in 2001 July, and was visited by many family and the local CIA. This is officially denied by the US. OBL was on trial (in absentia) in New York at the time, for the 1993 WTC bombing.

A Spanish court indicted bin Laden and 34 others on charges related to terrorism on September 17, 2003.

Osama's eldest brother Salem was a business partner of George W. Bush until his death in a light-plane crash in 1983 (JR) or 1988 (PBS). The Bush and bin Laden families were prominent players in the Carlyle Group until 9/11.

Evil exists. And militant Islamism (the militant Islamism of bin Laden, the Saudis, Saddam Hussein, the Baathists, and the Palestinian suicide bombers) or Islamofascism is the enemy of freedom and the distilled essence of evil. Totalitarian ideologies and fanaticisms have come in gone and have been defeated by America. All these ideologies are one in the same. They hate modernity, hate America, hate freedom, hate capitalism, hate liberal democracy, and love terrorism, oppression, genoicide, and fanatic hatred. In Germany the tyranical enemies of freedom and capitalism rallied behind Nazism, in Italy they rallied behind fascism, in Russia they rallied behind totalitarian socialism and communism, and now in the Middle East, where a lot of dictators and tyrants are threatened by freedom and American values, they rally behind militant Islamics. It is fact that there isnt a single Arab democracy. Muslim leaders (Saddam was just the worst of the lot. There will be more dictators/terrorists to fight like the Syrians) are all tyrants and terrorists who stifle the free press, kill their own people, crush their citizens hopes and dreams, and want to kill Americans like they did on 9/11. Their desire to kill Americans and supprot terror rests on one deep, abiding hatred: their irrational fear of America, which sticks up for freedom and opposes their tyranny with great scarafices, like America is doing right now defeating evil in the Arab countries of Iraq and Afghnaistan.

The ideology of militant Islamist terrorism is the totalitarian enemy that America confronts today. And patriotic Americans say it will be defeated like America defeated totalitarianisms in the past through heroic struggle: Communism, fascism, Nazism.

A lot of conservative commentators who speak with moral clarity call America's struggle against the evil of Islamofascist totalitarianism right now World War IV. That this is freedom's fourth struggle against a totalitarian evil. In WWI it was the despotic rule of the Kaiser, in WWII it was the Nazis, in freedom's third struggle it was the communists in the Cold War (although it wasnt a "hot war" it was another global stuggle like a world war). Now America's forth stuggle is a worldwide campaign against states like Iraq that hate the free world, kill their own people, desire weapons of mass destruction, and support terrorism.

The antiwar liberal left appeases totalitarian evil, which they love to do. They rallied to defend the Communists in Vietnam. Now the amoral liberal left is opposing America's commander in chief George W Bush in his struggle in Iraq. Hundreds of millions were slaughtered (Communism murdered 100 million people while the liberals opposed the Cold War at every step) and Communism threatened the freedom of America and her allies. Conservatives say that America must stop this new totalitarian enemy before its murderous hate claims as many victims as Communism.

See Also

• terrorist incidents
• videos of bin Laden
• Worldwide perception of Osama bin Laden

External Links

• Osama bin Laden News, News Searches, and Reference: http://www.HavenWorks.com/world/afghanistan/bin-laden
• Interview with Usama bin Laden. Questions partly by some of his followers and partly by ABC reporter John Miller, (May 1998).
• Bin Laden comes home to roost by Michael Moran, MSNBC, August 24, 1998. Describes the CIA/Bin Laden relationship.
• Transcript (.pdf file) of interview by CNN 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.
  • CNN story about the interview.
• Michel Chossudovsky ‘Who Is Osama Bin Laden?’ and ‘Osamagate’ Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montréal, (September 12 and October 9, 2001).
• David Hollander, Osama Bin Laden: International Terrorist and Muslim Hero, 10-page pdf-document, (May 3, 2001).
• FBI announcement: Usama bin Laden is the most wanted fugitive, (June 1999).
• Interpol notice (1998)
• Picture of Bin Ladin and two brothers on a visit to Oxford in 1971. Story on BBC.
• http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/terror_binladin980610.html
• http://www.infoplease.com/spot/osamabinladen.html
• BBC | Clinton ordered Bin Laden killing
• $US 40 billion sponsorship of islamic fundamentalist training program - Carter + Brzezinski
• Photos of Osama bin Laden and Zbigniew Brzezinski during weapons inspection in terrorist training camp.
• One of Osama's sisters-in-law on his likely financial relationship with family (ABC News).
• Fatwa from World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders
• ABC News reporter John Miller asks bin Laden about his fatwa against US citizens (May 1998).