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Osama
bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda Organization
Profile: International terrorist/Islamic
Extremist
Age: 44
Born: Saudi Arabia
Current location: Exiled in Afghanistan
Activities: Bin Laden is believed to
have masterminded and financed several of the past decade's most
barbaric acts of terrorism. The United States government believes
that he and his worldwide terrorist network played a central role
in the Sept. 11, 2001 multiple plane hijackings and coordinated
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Saudi
exile has been directly linked to the Aug. 7, 1998 bombing of the
U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,
killing 224 people, and the October 2000 bombing attack of the
U.S.S. Cole in Yemen.
Beliefs and Goals: In 1998, bin Laden
issued a religious edict to his followers, "to kill the
Americans and their allies, civilians and the military." Bin
Laden has made no secret of his anti-American, anti-Western and
anti-Israel sentiments.
Status: Living in exile under the
protection of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, he is currently on the
State Department's ten-most-wanted list.
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Osama bin Laden is a 44 year-old "businessman" and
son of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, and the coordinator of
an international terrorist network believed to be responsible for numerous
deadly attacks against American and Western targets.
Bin Laden formed the terrorist Al-Qaeda ("the base")
organization in 1988, and it is believed to have operatives in as many as
twenty countries. In 1998 bin Laden announced the establishment of "The
International Islamic Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders,"
an umbrella organization linking Islamic extremists in scores of countries
around the world, including Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The group
issued a religious edict upon its establishment: "The ruling to kill
the Americans and their allies, civilians, and the military, is an
individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it
is possible to do it, in order to liberate al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy
Mosque from their grip and in order for their armies to move out of all
the lands of Islam, defeated, and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is
in accordance with the words of Almighty G-d, and 'fight the pagans all
together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is
no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in G-d."
His militancy is traced back to the 1979 Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan. Bin Laden's avowed goal from that time is to remove
Western "infidels" from Muslim countries - the Russians from
Afghanistan, the American military from Saudi Arabia and other points in
the Gulf - the downfall of many government of Muslim states, and for the
destruction of the United States and its allies.
Bin Laden is the son of the Yemeni-born owner of a leading
Saudi construction company. Born into great wealth, he is believed to have
inherited as much as $300 million when his father died in the 1960's. From
1979, bin Laden began raising money for the Mujahadeen forces fighting the
Soviets in Afghanistan, and gradually became more and more affiliated with
Egyptian Islamic extremist groups, such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad. From
the mid-1980's bin Laden began to establish training camps in Afghanistan,
initially for the war in Afghanistan, but later to fight against other
targets worldwide. He has attracted thousands of recruits from Saudi
Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan and Sudan.
Reportedly, bin Laden's anti-Americanism intensified
during the Gulf War, when U.S. troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia.
According to The New York Times: "The presence of American soldiers
in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the home of
the two holiest Muslim shrines, enraged Mr. bin Laden and other Arab
militants." He and his associates also blamed the U.S. support for
Israel as anti-Islam.
In 1994 Saudi Arabia stripped bin Laden's citizenship,
citing his opposition to the Saudi King and leadership and expelled him
from the country. He then went to Khartoum, Sudan (where he owns numerous
businesses), but under U.S. pressure was expelled in 1996 and relocated to
Afghanistan. Bin Laden is on the FBI's list of 10 most-wanted criminals,
and the State Department offered a $5 million reward for his arrest
following the August 1998 embassy bombings. The United Nations imposed
economic sanctions on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 1999 for
harboring bin Laden, and many nations, including the U.S. have frozen
assets owned by bin Laden and his senior associates.
Bin Laden has been thought to finance, inspire or directly
organize various terrorist attacks. In one way or another his name has
been linked to the killings of Western tourists by militant Islamic groups
in Egypt, bombings in France by Islamic extremist Algerians, the
maintenance of a safe-house in Pakistan for Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the
convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and
sheltering Sheikh Omar Abd Al-Rahman (the Blind Sheikh), who was also
convicted in the World Trade Center bombing. He has also been linked to
the 1992 bombings of a hotel in Yemen, which killed two Australians, but
was supposedly targeted against American soldiers stationed there; the
1995 detonation of a car bomb in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the 1995 truck bomb
in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen; and the 1995
assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Bin Laden has
been directly connected to the August 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S.
embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224
people, and the October 2000 attack of the U.S. destroyer ship Cole in
Yemen.
Bin Laden has made no secret of his anti-American,
anti-Western and anti-Israel sentiments. In fact, he has been outspoken on
these topics, issuing theological rulings calling for Muslims to attack
Americans and threatening terrorism against related targets. Pointing to
the defeat of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, bin Laden has consistently
declared that the United States is vulnerable to defeat by a jihad by
Islamic forces:
Osama bin Laden in His Own Words:
- Summer 2001 - A videotape circulating in the Middle East features
bin Laden reciting a victory poem about the USS Cole bombing, and then
issues a call to arms: "To all the Mujah: Your brothers in
Palestine are waiting for you; it's time to penetrate America and
Israel and hit them where it hurts the most."
- January 1999 – In an interview with bin Laden published in Newsweek:
"Muslim scholars have issued a fatwa [a religious order] against
any American who pays taxes to his government. He is our target
because he is helping the American war machine against the Muslim
nation."
"The [International Front of Islamic Movements, an alliance of
extremist organizations created by bin Laden] is an umbrella to all
organizations fighting the jihad against Jews and the crusaders. The
response from Muslim nations has been greater than we expected. We are
urging all of them to start fighting, or at least to start preparing
to fight, against the enemies of Islam."
- In an interview published in Time the same week (from a
December 1998 ABC News interview with bin Laden): "If the
instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in order to
liberate al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka’aba [Islamic shrines in
Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia] is considered a crime, then let history be
a witness that I am a criminal.
Hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we hope to be
rewarded for it by God"
- May 1998 - Bin Laden issued a statement entitled "The Nuclear
Bomb of Islam," under the banner of the "International
Islamic Front for Fighting the Jews and Crusaders," in which he
stated that "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force
as possible to terrorize the enemies of God."
- February 1998 - Under the banner of the "International Islamic
Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders," bin Laden endorsed a fatwa,
religious decree, to call for the liberation of Muslim holy places in
Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as the death of Americans and their
allies. The decree says, "These crimes and sins committed by the
Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger and
Muslims."
- May 1997 - During an interview with CNN, bin Laden reaffirms his
call for a holy war against Americans. "We have focused our
declaration of jihad on the U.S. soldiers inside Arabia…The U.S.
government has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and
criminal through its support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine."
Bin Laden in an interview with CNN’s Peter Arnett: "If the
American government is serious about avoiding the explosions inside the
US, then let it stop provoking the feelings of 1,250 million Muslims.
Those hundreds of thousands who have been killed or displaced in Iraq,
Palestine, Lebanon, do have brothers and relatives. They would make of
Ramzi Yousef [convicted for his role in 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center] a symbol and a teacher. The US will drive them to transfer the
battle into the United States."
- May 1997 - Bin Laden reaffirmed his call for a holy war against
Americans. "The US Government has committed acts that are
extremely unjust, hideous and criminal through its support of the
Israeli occupation of Palestine"
- February 1997 - Bin Laden threatens holy war against the U.S. in an
interview on the British documentary program, Dispatches. "This
war will not only be between the people of the two sacred mosques and
the Americans, but it will be between the Islamic world and the
Americans and their allies because this war is a new crusade led by
America against the Islamic nations."
- November 1996 - Bin Laden issues an ultimatum to the U.S. and
Western countries with troops stationed in Arab countries and declares
a holy war against the "enemy." "Had we wanted to carry
out small operations after our threat statement, we would have been
able to… We thought that the two bombings in Riyadh and Dhahran
would be enough (sic.) a signal to the wise U.S. decision-makers to
avoid the real confrontation with the Islamic nation, but it seems
they did not understand it."
- November 1996 - Bin Laden warns U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia to
expect more "effective, qualitative" attacks and advises
Western forces to speed their "departure" from the Middle
East.
- August 1996 - Bin Laden says to the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi
newspaper that the Saudis have a "legitimate right" to
attack the5,000 American military personnel stationed in Saudi Arabia.
"The presence of the American crusader armed forces in the
countries of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger and the biggest
harm that threatens the world’s largest oil reserves… The infidels
must be thrown out of the Arabian Peninsula."
- August 1996 - Bin Laden issued a Declaration of jihad, holy war,
entitled: "Message from Osama bin Laden to his Muslim Brothers in
the Whole World and Especially in the Arabian Peninsula: Declaration
of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy
Mosques; Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula."
- August 1996 In an interview with The Independent, a London daily,
bin Laden calls the June 1995 truck bomb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia"
the beginning of war between Muslims and the United States."
-
July
1996 - Bin Laden warns that the terrorists who bombed American
soldiers in Saudi Arabia will also attack British and French military
personnel. He said "[the bomb in Dhahran] was the result of
American behavior against Muslims, its support of Jews in Palestine,
and the massacre of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon."
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Link:
ADL
[9.10.2001
01.30]
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