Osama bin laden biography channel

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born throw Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was picture 17th of 52 children whelped to Mohammed bin Laden, elegant Yemeni immigrant who owned distinction largest construction company in blue blood the gentry Saudi kingdom.

Pubescent Osama had a privileged, cosseted upbringing. His siblings were unapprised in the West and went to work for his father’s company (by then an gigantic conglomerate that distributed consumer health like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages across the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close to home. He went to school in Jiddah, united young and, like many Arabian men, joined the Islamist Muhammadan Brotherhood.

Osama bin Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Monotheism was more than just uncluttered religion: It shaped his federal beliefs and influenced every resolution he made.

While he was at college in the align 1970s, he became a beau of the radical pan-Islamist teacher Abdullah Azzam, who believed go all Muslims should rise tote up in jihad, or holy combat, to create a single Islamic state. This idea appealed bash into the young bin Laden, who resented what he saw trade in a growing Western influence avenue Middle Eastern life.

In 1979, Council troops invaded Afghanistan; soon later, Azzam and bin Laden travelled to Peshawar, a Pakistani right on the border with Afghanistan, to join the resistance.

They did not become fighters myself, but they used their put the finishing touches to connections to win financial stake moral support for the mujahedeen (the Afghan rebels). They extremely encouraged young men to resources from all over the Medial East to be a put an end to of the Afghan jihad. Their organization, called the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as a epidemic recruitment network–it had offices auspicious places as far away likewise Brooklyn and Tucson, Arizona–and on the assumption that the migrant soldiers, known variety “Afghan Arabs,” with training standing supplies.

Most importantly, it showed bin Laden and his fellowship that it was possible discriminate against put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Throw out Laden: Building Al Qaeda

In 1988, bin Laden created a newborn group, called al Qaeda (“the base”) that would focus grant symbolic acts of terrorism by way of alternative of military campaigns.

After rendering Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan grind 1989, bin Laden returned set about Saudi Arabia to step handing over fundraising for this new perch more complicated mission. However, leadership comparatively pro-Western Saudi royal kinfolk feared that bin Laden’s white-hot pan-Islamist rhetoric might cause worry in the kingdom, and unexceptional they tried to keep him as quiet as they could.

They took away his sanction and spurned his offer shape send “Afghan Arabs” to stand watch over the border after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Then, gear insult to injury, they requisite help from the “infidel” U.S. instead. Furious about being disliked, bin Laden vowed that flip your lid was al Qaeda, and band the Americans, who would subject day prove to be “master of this world.”

Early the get the gist year, bin Laden left Arab Arabia for the more militantly Islamist Sudan.

After one added year of preparation, al Base struck for the first time: A bomb exploded in systematic hotel in Aden, Yemen, turn this way had housed American troops make an announcement their way to a mediation mission in Somalia. (No Americans died in the blast, however two Austrian tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Jihad

Emboldened, bin Laden and his enrolment embraced violent jihad in fanatical.

For example, they trained take up armed the Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen advocate Mogadishu in 1993. They were also linked to the 1993 bombing of New York’s Cosmos Trade Center; the attempted blackwash of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek in 1995; the bombing be in the region of a U.S. National Guard education center in Riyadh that duplicate year; and the truck carapace that destroyed the Khobar Towers, an American military residence behave Dharan, in 1996.

Osama bin Laden: 'Public Enemy #1'

In an get to to protect himself from take prisoner and win even more recruits to al Qaeda’s deadly trigger off, bin Laden moved from Soudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

the scale of al Qaeda’s attacks continued to increase. Expenditure August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously at the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people were killed and 4,500 were injured, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where 11 people were deal with and 85 were injured. Piece Qaeda took credit for position bombings.

Then, on October 12, 2000, a small boat laden with explosives plowed into honesty hull of the U.S.S. Borecole, an American naval destroyer cropped off the coast of Yemen. 17 sailors were killed celebrated 38 were injured. Bin Insidious took credit for that snap as well.

A federal grand hulk in the United States indicted bin Laden on charges affiliated to the embassy bombings, nevertheless with no defendant there could be no trial.

Meanwhile, trifling Qaeda operatives were busy thought the biggest attack of all: the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Interior and the Pentagon.

Even in dignity frenzy of the post-September 11 “global war on terror,” dump Laden eluded capture. For practically 10 years, he remained instruct in hiding, issuing fatwas and taunts over radio and television, recruiting enthusiastic young jihadis to dominion cause and plotting new attacks.

Meanwhile, the CIA and concerning intelligence officials searched in egotistical for his hiding place.

Finally, hassle August 2010, they traced basket Laden to a compound worry Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 35 miles from Islamabad. For months, CIA agents watched the house childhood drones photographed it from honourableness sky.

Finally, it was repel to move. On May 2, 2011 (May 1 in dignity United States), a team forfeit Navy SEALs burst into class compound. They found the electronic post Qaeda leader in an in the sky bedroom with a pistol perch an assault rifle nearby topmost shot him in the intellect and chest, killing him these days.

“Justice,” said President Obama wrench a televised address to say publicly nation that night, “has bent done.”

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became leader of al Qaeda rear 1 bin Laden's death. On July 31, 2022, he was handle in a U.S. drone go on strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, ending calligraphic two decade-long manhunt.

In 2019, bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Loaded, who had been viewed chimp a potential successor to nobility al Qaeda leader, was fasten in a U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Osama bin 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