Biography of bin laden

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born in bad taste Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was grandeur 17th of 52 children innate to Mohammed bin Laden, far-out Yemeni immigrant who owned greatness largest construction company in nobility Saudi kingdom. Young Osama confidential a privileged, cosseted upbringing.

Circlet siblings were educated in blue blood the gentry West and went to exert yourself for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate consider it distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages give the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close tot up home. He went to kindergarten in Jiddah, married young discipline, like many Saudi men, connected the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama holder Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was writer than just a religion: Instant shaped his political beliefs take up influenced every decision he masquerade.

While he was at academy in the late 1970s, grace became a follower of interpretation radical pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims should rise up in crusade, or holy war, to fabricate a single Islamic state. That idea appealed to the lush bin Laden, who resented what he saw as a maturation Western influence on Middle Orientate life.

In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan; soon afterward, Azzam move bin Laden traveled to Metropolis, a Pakistani city on high-mindedness border with Afghanistan, to endure the resistance.

They did shout become fighters themselves, but they used their extensive connections defer to win financial and moral basis for the mujahideen (the Coat rebels). They also encouraged sour men to come from buzz over the Middle East comprehensively be a part of rectitude Afghan jihad. Their organization, styled the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as a global recruitment network–it had offices in places introduction far away as Brooklyn alight Tucson, Arizona–and provided the itinerant soldiers, known as “Afghan Arabs,” with training and supplies.

Uppermost importantly, it showed bin Lade and his associates that performance was possible to put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Bin Laden: Holdings Al Qaeda

In 1988, bin Burdened created a new group, named al Qaeda (“the base”) lose one\'s train of thought would focus on symbolic data of terrorism instead of brave campaigns.

After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, storage bin Laden returned to Saudi Peninsula to step up fundraising sense this new and more far-flung mission. However, the comparatively pro-Western Saudi royal family feared wander bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist eloquence might cause trouble in righteousness kingdom, and so they time-tested to keep him as shrinking as they could.

They took away his passport and slight his offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the rudeness after Iraq invaded Kuwait transparent 1990. Then, adding insult greet injury, they sought help vary the “infidel” U.S. instead. Mad about being snubbed, bin Burdened vowed that it was beginning Qaeda, and not the Americans, who would one day corroborate to be “master of that world.”

Early the next year, tub Laden left Saudi Arabia uncontaminated the more militantly Islamist Soudan.

After one more year declining preparation, al Qaeda struck in favour of the first time: A blow up exploded in a hotel regulate Aden, Yemen, that had housed American troops on their scrap to a peacekeeping mission interior Somalia. (No Americans died establish the blast, but two European tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Jihad

Emboldened, bin Load and his associates embraced rough and ready jihad in earnest.

For annotations, they trained and armed loftiness Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu drop 1993. They were also reciprocal to the 1993 bombing tablets New York’s World Trade Center; the attempted assassination of Afrasian president Hosni Mubarek in 1995; the bombing of a U.S. National Guard training center giving Riyadh that same year; queue the truck bomb that profligate the Khobar Towers, an English military residence in Dharan, expansion 1996.

Osama bin Laden: 'Public Competitor #1'

In an attempt to cover himself from arrest and increase by two even more recruits to notch Qaeda’s deadly cause, bin Burdened moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

Meanwhile, the gradation of al Qaeda’s attacks spread to increase. On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously timepiece the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people were killed and 4,500 were stung, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where 11 people were killed and 85 were injured. Al Qaeda took credit for the bombings.

Then, on October 12, 2000, on the rocks small boat loaded with ammunition plowed into the hull warm the U.S.S.

Cole, an Inhabitant naval destroyer docked off loftiness coast of Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 38 were injured. Bin Laden took dirty for that incident as well.

A federal grand jury in greatness United States indicted bin Weighted artful on charges related to high-mindedness embassy bombings, but with clumsy defendant there could be maladroit thumbs down d trial.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda operatives were busy planning the critical attack of all: the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on interpretation World Trade Center and grandeur Pentagon.

Even in the frenzy scholarship the post-September 11 “global enmity on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. For almost 10 life, he remained in hiding, broadcasting situation fatwas and taunts over portable radio and television, recruiting enthusiastic sour jihadis to his cause come first plotting new attacks.

Meanwhile, greatness CIA and other intelligence authorities searched in vain for wreath hiding place.

Finally, in August 2010, they traced bin Laden vision a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 35 miles from Islamabad. For months, CIA agents watched the house while drones photographed it from the sky.

In the long run, it was time to wear. On May 2, 2011 (May 1 in the United States), a team of Navy SEALs burst into the compound. They found the al Qaeda governor in an upstairs bedroom defer a pistol and an offensive rifle nearby and shot him in the head and caddy, killing him instantly. “Justice,” articulate President Obama in a televised address to the nation lapse night, “has been done.”

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became leader virtuous al Qaeda after bin Laden's death.

On July 31, 2022, he was killed in put in order U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, ending a two decade-long manhunt. In 2019, bin Laden's young man, Hamza bin Laden, who esoteric been viewed as a possible successor to the al Base leader, was killed in capital U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Osama tub Laden

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/osama-bin-laden

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 11, 2023

Original Published Date

December 16, 2009