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Osama bin Laden Biography

Terrorist

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Also known as: Usama bin Laden, Ussamah bin Laden

The U.S. government considers Osama bin Laden to be the most dangerous terrorist in the world. Bin Laden joined the Afghanistani resistance in 1979 and became a commander in the guerilla wars against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. After that war ended, bin Laden founded a loose organization of pro-Islamic terrorists known as al-Qaeda ("the base"). He then joined with the Egyptian militants led by Ayman al-Zawahiri to form an international group whose goals included driving the United States out of the Middle East and overthrowing the government of Saudi Arabia. Attacks which bin Laden is believed to have plotted or inspired include the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 truck bombing of a Saudi National Guard training center, and the 1998 explosions at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (Bin Laden was added to the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitive" list after the embassy attacks.) Along with captured suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he is considered responsible for the September 2001 attacks that crippled the Pentagon and destroyed New York's World Trade Center. Despite an intensive American efforts in the years since that attack, bin Laden has not been captured.

Extra credit: Some sources, including the FBI, spell his first name "Usama"... Bin Laden's supporter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. bomb strike in Iraq on 7 June 2006... There is no truth to the e-mail rumor that Osama bin Laden was identified as a terrorist by Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987... Osama bin Laden was one of 52 children fathered by Muhammad bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian construction magnate... bin Laden's neice, Wafah Dufour, is an aspiring pop musician who posed for a photo shoot in the January 2006 issue of GQ magazine.

Other figures related to the 9/11 attacks: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, so-called American Taliban John Walker Lindh, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

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