Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden
أسامة بن لادن
Bin Laden c. 1997–1998
1st General Emir of al-Qaeda
In office
11 August 1988 – 2 May 2011
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byAyman al-Zawahiri
Personal details
Born
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden

(1957-03-10)10 March 1957
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Died2 May 2011(2011-05-02) (aged 54)
Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Manner of deathShot during Operation Neptune Spear
Resting placeArabian Sea
Citizenship
  • Saudi Arabia (until 1994)
  • Stateless (from 1994)
Spouses
(m. 1974; sep. 2001)
Khadijah Sharif
(m. 1983; div. 1990)
Khairiah Sabar
(m. 1985)
Siham Sabar
(m. 1987)
Amal Ahmed al-Sadah
(m. 2000)
Children20–26, including Abdallah, Saad, Omar and Hamza
Parents
RelativesBin Laden family
ReligionSunni Islam[1][2][3][4]
JurisprudenceHanbali
Military service
Allegiance
Years of service1984–2011
RankGeneral Emir of al-Qaeda
Battles/wars

Osama bin Laden[a] (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi Arabian–born Islamist dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda, a militant terrorist organization espousing Islamism, pan-Islamism and jihadism. Bin Laden participated in the Afghan mujahideen's jihad against the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War, and supported the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. Opposed to the United States' foreign policy in the Middle East, Bin Laden declared war on the U.S. in 1996. He supervised international terrorist attacks against Americans, including the September 11 attacks inside the U.S. in 2001.

Bin Laden was born in Riyadh to the aristocratic bin Laden family. He studied at Saudi and foreign universities until 1979, when he joined the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat, which recruited foreign mujahideen into the war. Bin Laden was an influential ideologue who inspired several Islamist organizations. To many Islamists, he was a war hero for helping defend Afghanistan, and a voice for some who opposed perceived Western imperialism. He founded al-Qaeda in 1988 for worldwide jihad. In the Gulf War, Bin Laden's offer for support against Iraq was rebuked by the Saudi royal family, which instead sought American aid.

Bin Laden's views on pan-Islamism and anti-Americanism resulted in his expulsion from Saudi Arabia in 1991. He shifted his headquarters to Sudan until 1996, when he established a new base in Afghanistan, where he was supported by the Taliban. Bin Laden declared two fatāwā in August 1996 and February 1998, declaring holy war against the U.S. After the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, he was indicted by a U.S. district court and listed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists and Most Wanted Fugitives lists. In October 1999, the United Nations designated al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization.

In the U.S., Bin Laden is a symbol of terrorism and mass murder, highly reviled for his justification and orchestration of attacks against Americans. He organized the September 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people. This resulted in the U.S. invading Afghanistan and launching the war on terror. Bin Laden became the subject of a nearly decade-long international manhunt led by the U.S. During this period, he hid in the mountains of Afghanistan and later escaped to neighboring Pakistan. On 2 May 2011, Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special operations forces at his compound in Abbottabad. His corpse was buried in the Arabian Sea and he was succeeded by his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri on 16 June 2011.

  1. ^ Fair, C. Christine; Watson, Sarah J. (18 February 2015). Pakistan's Enduring Challenges. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 246. ISBN 978-0-8122-4690-2. Archived from the original on 31 January 2016. Osama bin Laden was a hard-core Salafi who openly espoused violence against the United States in order to achieve Salafi goals.
  2. ^ Brown, Amy Benson; Poremski, Karen M. (18 December 2014). Roads to Reconciliation: Conflict and Dialogue in the Twenty-first Century. Routledge. p. 81. ISBN 978-1-317-46076-3. Archived from the original on 31 January 2016.
  3. ^ Osama bin Laden (2007) Suzanne J. Murdico
  4. ^ Armstrong, Karen (11 July 2005). "The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 December 2016.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · View on Wikipedia

Developed by Nelliwinne