osama bin laden

osama bin laden
Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was the 17th of 52 children born to Mohammed bin Laden, a Yemeni immigrant who owned the largest construction company in the Saudi kingdom. Young Osama had a privileged, cosseted upbringing. His siblings were educated in the West and went to work for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate that distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages across the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close to home. He went to school in Jiddah, married young and, like many Saudi men, joined the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.Osama bin Laden was born Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden on March 10, 1957, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to construction billionaire Mohammed Awad bin Laden and Mohammed's 10th wife, Syrian-born Alia Ghanem. Osama was the seventh of 50 children born to Muhammad bin Laden, but the only child from his father's marriage to Alia Ghanem.

Osama's father started his professional life in the 1930s in relative poverty, working as a porter in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. During his time as a young laborer, Mohammed impressed the royal family with his work on their palaces, which he built at a much lower cost than any of his competitors could, and with a much greater attention to detail. By the 1960s, he had managed to land several large government contracts to build extensions on the Mecca, Medina and Al-Aqsa mosques. He became a highly influential figure in Jeddah; when the city fell on hard financial times, Mohammed used his wealth to pay all civil servants' wages for the entire kingdom for a six-month period. As a result, Mohammed bin Laden became well respected in his community.

As a father, he was very strict, insisting that all his children live under one roof and observe a rigid religious and moral code. He dealt with his children, especially his sons, as if they were adults, and demanded they become confident and self-sufficient at an early age.

Osama, however, barely came to know his father before his parents divorced. After his family split, Osama's mother took him to live with her new husband, Muhammad al-Attas. The couple had four children together, and Osama spent most of his childhood living with his step-siblings, and attending Al Thagher Model School—at the time the most prestigious high school in Jedda. His biological father would go on to marry two more times, until his death in a charter plane crash in September 1967.

At the age of 14, Osama was recognized as an outstanding, if somewhat shy, student at Al Thagher. As a result, he received a personal invitation to join a small Islamic study group with the promise of earning extra credit. Osama, along with the sons of several prominent Jedda families, were told the group would memorize the entire Koran, a prestigious accomplishment, by the time they graduated from the institution. But the group soon lost its original focus, and during this time Osama received the beginnings of an education in some of the principles of violent jihad.

The teacher who educated the children, influenced in part by a sect of Islam called The Brotherhood, began instructing his pupils in the importance of instituting a pure, Islamic law around the Arab world. Using parables with often-violent endings, their teacher explained that the most loyal observers of Islam would institute the holy word—even if it meant supporting death and destruction. By the second year of their studies, Osama and his friends had openly adopted the attitude and styles of teen Islamic activists. They preached the importance of instituting a pure Islamic law at Al Thagher; grew untrimmed beards; and wore shorter pants and wrinkled shirts in imitation of the Prophet's dress.

Osama was pushed to grow up rather quickly during his time at Al Thagher. At the age of 18 he married his first cousin, 14-year-old Najwa Ghanem, who had been promised to him. Osama graduated from Al Thager in 1976, the same year his first child, a son named Abdullah, was born. He then headed to King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where some say he received a degree in public administration in 1981. Others claim he received a degree in civil engineering, in an effort to join the family business.

From Hero to Exile
But Osama would have little chance to use his degree. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Osama joined the Afghan resistance, believing it was his duty as a Muslim to fight the occupation. He relocated to Peshawar, Afghanistan, and using aid from the United States under the CIA program Operation Cyclone, he began training a mujahideen, a group of Islamic jihadists. After the Soviets withdrew from the country in 1989, Osama returned to Saudi Arabia as a hero, and the United States referred to him and his soldiers as "Freedom Fighters."

Yet Osama was quickly disappointed with what he believed was a corrupt Saudi government, and his frustration with the U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War led to a growing rift between Osama and his country's leaders. Bin Laden spoke publicly against the Saudi government's reliance on American troops, believing their presence profaned sacred soil. After several attempts to silence Osama, the Saudis banished the former hero. He lived in exile in Sudan beginning in 1992.

Formation of al Qaeda
By 1993, Osama had formed a secret network known as al Qaeda (Arabic for "the Base"), comprised of militant Muslims he had met while serving in Afghanistan. Soldiers were recruited for their ability to listen, their good manners, obedience, and their pledge to follow their superiors. Their goal was to take up the jihadist cause around the world, righting perceived wrongs under the accordance of pure, Islamic law. Under Osama's leadership, the group funded and began organizing global attacks worldwide. By 1994, after continued advocacy of extremist jihad, the Saudi government forced Osama to relinquish his Saudi citizenship, and confiscated his passport. His family also disowned him, cutting off his $7 million yearly stipend.

Undeterred, Osama began executing his violent plans, with the goal of drawing the United States into war. His hope was that Muslims, unified by the battle, would create a single, true Islamic state. In 1996, to forward his goal, al Qaeda detonated truck bombs against U.S. occupied forces in Saudi Arabia. The next year, they claimed responsibility for killing tourists in Egypt, and in 1998 they bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania, killing nearly 300 people in the process.

Osama's actions abroad did not go unnoticed by the Sudanese government, and he was exiled from their country in 1996. Not able to return to Saudi Arabia, Osama took refuge in Afghanistan, where he received protection from the country's ruling Taliban militia. While under the protection of the Taliban, Osama issued a series of fatwas, religious statements, which declared a holy war against the United States. Among the accusations reared at the offending country were the pillaging of natural resources in the Muslim world, and assisting the enemies of Islam.

9/11 and Final Days
By 2001, Osama had attempted, and often successfully executed attacks on several countries using the help of Al Qaeda trained terrorists and his seemingly bottomless financial resources. On September 11, 2001, Osama would deliver his most devastating blow to the United States. A small group of Osama's Al Qaeda jihadists hijacked four commercial passenger aircraft in the United States, two of which collided into the World Trade Center towers. Another aircraft crashed into The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane was successfully retaken, and crashed in Pennsylvania. The intended target of the final aircraft was believed to be the United States Capitol. In all, the attack killed nearly 3,000 civilians.

Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, the government under President George W. Bush formed a coalition that successfully overthrew the Taliban. Osama went into hiding and, for more than 10 years, he was hunted along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In 2004, shortly before President Bush's re-election, Osama bin Laden released a videotaped message claiming responsibility for the attacks on 9/11.

Then, on May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a terrorist compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In an eight-month plan enacted by the president, and led by CIA Director Leon Panetta and American special forces, Osama was shot several times. His body was taken as evidence of his death, and DNA tests revealed that the body was, in fact, his. "For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda's leader and symbol and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and our allies," President Obama said in a late-night address to the nation on the eve of Osama's death. "The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda." He added that "his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity."Rather than hiding in a cave as U.S. cartoonists like to depict, Osama bin Laden was living "high on the hog" in a huge compound in an upscale Pakistani suburb.

The terrorist's fortress-like home in Abbotabad, Pakistan, consisted of two main buildings, one of them being three stories tall. Bin Laden and his family lived on the second and third floors of the larger building, according to senior defense and intelligence officials who spoke on background.

The walled compound was just 35 miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and just down the street from Pakistan's version of West Point. The area is also popular with retired Pakistani army officers.

"He was more or less living in plain sight," said a senior intelligence official. "Others are living in more dire situations" while bin Laden was living "relatively high on the hog," the official said.

Two other families lived in the smaller building and the first floor of bin Laden's house.

Despite bin Laden living so boldly, senior intelligence official said there were no indications that the Pakistanis knew that the man they had been hunting for a decade was in the compound.

Nevertheless, when the U.S. first received the key intelligence last August they did not share it with the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis were asked for information that helped the U.S. determine that bin Laden was in the compound, but they were not made aware of any U.S. interest in the compound, officials said.

Pakistan wasn't informed of the raid until after it was over, the sources said.

When the Navy SEALS swooped down on the compound, the operation began by clearing the smaller building. Forty minutes later, bin Laden was shot dead in the larger building.

Osama Bin Laden Hid Behind a Woman

During the gunfight, bin Laden and three other men tried to fight back and used women as human shields, White House counterterrorism head John Brennan said. Brennan told a news conference that bin Laden used one of his wives as a shield, but in the end both the woman and bin Laden were killed.

Sources said two other women were wounded in the exchange of gunfire.

The operation went smoothly and quickly. Senior administration officials gathered to monitor the attack about 1 p.m. ET Sunday and nearly three hours later President Obama was told that bin Laden was dead.

Before burying the world's most wanted man at sea, the Obama administration claims it tried to find a country willing to accept bin Laden's remains, but defense and intelligence officials said there were no countries willing to take the body. Officials refused to answer when those countries were contacted.

Without a country willing to take the corpse, it didn't take long for the U.S. to dispose of it. Bin Laden's body arrived on board the aircraft USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea at 1:10 a.m. ET where it was washed and wrapped in white sheets according to Islamic custom, officials said. A military officer read religious remarks that were translated by a native Arabic speaker.

By 2 a.m. ET -- just 13 hours after the operation began -- bin Laden's body sank beneath waters of the Arabian Sea.

The raiders didn't just leave with bin Laden's body. They also took with them a large amount of materials that were seized during the raid for analysis. There are no details as to what the materials are. CIA is setting up a task force to go through the items.

For officials at the White House there were no guarantees that the operation would succeed. Given the amount of time it took to launch the mission from time they determine that bin Laden was in the house there was some concern that he might not be there by the time the raiding party arrived.

"At the end of the day the president made a very bold decision," said a senior intelligence official.

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