Osama Bin Laden

Date of Birth:1957  

Place of Birth: Saudi Arabia  

Height: 6'4" to 6'6"  

Osama bin Laden was a Mujahadin who fought against the Russian Forces that occupied Afgahsitan, he gained popularity due to his role in supplying of weapons and economic power to Taliban that ultimately lead the Russians to run away. After driving Russians out he took arms against America and  initially successfully killed many Us Armed forces but after a while he declared war against American Civilians which have resulted in many civilian deaths of Americans .In 2003 he also targeted many Muslim countries and killed many innocent civilians.2003, his organization targeted a apartment complex in Saudi Arabia which was home of Middle Class Arab Muslims .His popularity has dropped after he turned a terrorist from a Jihadi (Holy Fighter).

Bin Laden was born in 1957, the 17th of an estimated 52 children of a well-connected multimillionaire Saudi construction magnate. He studied at a Saudi university and took part in the family business, the bin Laden Group, inheriting millions when his father died in 1968.

In 1979, bin Laden went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets alongside the Afghan resistance fighters known as the mujahedeen.

He used his family's connections and wealth to raise money for the Afghan resistance and provide the mujahedeen with logistical and humanitarian aid, and participated in battles in the Afghan war.

The United States, via the CIA, poured $3 billion into the Afghan resistance during the 1980s, providing weapons and other resources for bin Laden and thousands of others who would become his most loyal, fierce supporters.

The war, which ended with the Soviets' humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, had a profound effect on bin Laden, he later said.

"In this jihad, the biggest benefit was the myth of the superpower was destroyed, not only in my mind, but in the minds of all Muslims," bin Laden said. Jihad, the word for struggle, is used by bin Laden to mean holy war.

As the war drew to a close, the increasingly radical bin Laden formed al Qaeda, or "the Base" in Arabic, an organization of ex-mujahedeen and other supporters channeling fighters and funds to the Afghan resistance.

Declaring U.S. civilians the targets

Bin Laden himself returned to Saudi Arabia to work for the family construction firm. He aligned Saudi groups opposed to the reigning Saudi monarchy, the Fahd family, expressing anger at them and the United States for allowing U.S. and allied forces to invade Iraq from Saudi bases in the Gulf War.

He left Saudi Arabia for Sudan in 1991, taking assets that had grown to an estimated $250 million, according to some officials. (Others estimate a much lower value.) The Saudi government officially stripped bin Laden of his citizenship three years later, freezing all remaining assets he had in the country.

In 1996, bin Laden issued a "fatwah," a religious ruling, urging Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia -- a declaration he repeated to then-CNN producer Peter Bergen the following year.

"The U.S. government has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal," bin Laden told CNN. "We believe the United States is directly responsible for those killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq."

He made these remarks in a remote section of eastern Afghanistan -- home to the Taliban, a radical Islamic religious, military and political unit -- where he moved in 1997 after being expelled from Sudan. In 1998, bin Laden issued a second fatwah, this one calling for attacks on U.S. civilians.

Al Qaeda takes action

As the head of al Qaeda, bin Laden has forged alliances with like-minded fundamentalist groups such as Egypt's Al Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah, Sudan's National Islamic Front, and jihad groups in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, according to the U.S. government. Al Qaeda also has ties to the "Islamic Group," led at one time by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence since his 1995 conviction for a thwarted plot to blow up various New York landmarks. Two of Sheik Rahman's sons joined forces with bin Laden in the late 1990s. The United States alleges that from 1992 on, bin Laden and other al Qaeda members targeted U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen and those stationed in the Horn of Africa.

Bin Laden told CNN in 1997 that "Arab holy warriors" trained in Afghanistan had banded with Somali Muslims in October 1993 to kill 18 U.S. soldiers in a bloody battle on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. U.S. authorities indicted bin Laden in 1996 for training those involved in the attack.

On August 7, 1998, eight years after U.S. forces deployed in Saudi Arabia, a pair of truck bombs exploded, within nine minutes of each other, outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people, among them 12 Americans.

U.S. authorities quickly blamed al Qaeda and President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks on August 20, 1998, on suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. In October 2001, a U.S. judge sentenced four men, one a longtime bin Laden aide, to life in prison for their role in the bombings.

At the center of the storm

The man who pleaded guilty to a failed plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations leading up to New Year's Day 2000 claimed he was trained at an Afghanistan camp run by bin Laden.

Ahmed Ressam said he learned how to handle handguns, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers and how to assemble bombs made from the explosives TNT and C4.

Authorities foiled this and other planned attacks on Seattle revelers, a U.S. warship in the Middle East and tourist sites in U.S. ally Jordan.

But on October 12, 2000, a small boat containing two suicide bombers exploded near the USS Cole, then on port call off Aden, Yemen. Seventeen U.S. sailors died in the blast and U.S. authorities, yet again, accused bin Laden of masterminding the attack.

Bin Laden, apparently living in cave complexes in Afghanistan, did not admit his role, but he did continue recruiting for al Qaeda and publicly calling for a jihad against the United States.

He raised his public profile with a series of videotapes, most released to the Arabic-language TV network Al-Jazeera, in the weeks immediately after September 11. But as the videos stopped coming in spring and summer 2002, speculation was that he may have died in U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

But German intelligence officials and the editor of an Arabic-language magazine said in July that he is in good health.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to issue threats, pledging that bin Laden's jihad is far from over. An al Qaeda spokesman said in June that the group would soon "launch attacks against America."

"Our martyrs are ready for operations against American and Jewish targets inside and outside," the spokesman said. "America should be prepared. It should be ready. They should fasten the seat belts. We are coming to them where they never expected."

However Bin Laden is dead or not but Al-Qaeda is believed to be very active .From Sep 11^th,Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility of bombings in Bali Indonesia, Turkey, Saudia Arabia and Iran, Some believe Osama Has been the mastermind of all these bombings but there has been no evidence .

Bin Laden’s favourable vote has  plunged in even Most Pro-Osama area’s like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia due to his targeting of non-Muslim civilians as well as many hundreds of  Muslim civilians have who have died due to alleged bombings.

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