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Usâma ibn Muhammad ibn Awad ibn Lâdin (* March 10, 1957 in Riad ,Saudi-Arabia), for short Osama bin Laden , was a fighter during Afghanistan was under control of the Soviet Union. Today he\'s the worldwide most wanted terrorist especially because of the attacks on September 11, 2001.
His life:
Bin Laden was born as the 17th child of 52 childs, who his father had with his ten wifes. His father, Muhammad bin Laden, was Bedouin from Yemen.
He was building contractor and had connections to the saudi-arabian king Faisal. 1931 he built up the Saudi Binladin Group SGB. Osama\'s mother could be from Palestine or Saudi-Arabia because of different sources .
Bin Laden should have 24 children with his four wifes - divorced from one. His first wife Nadschwan Ibrahim Ghanim has eleven children with him. One of his daughters might be married with Mullah Omar, who is the leader of the Taliban.
Bin Laden speaks Arabian and maybe Urdu.
His militarian career:
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan galvanized bin Laden. He supported the Afghan resistance, which became a jihad, or holy war. Ironically, the U.S. became a major supporter of the Afghan resistance, or mujahideen, working with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to set up Islamic schools in Pakistan for Afghan refugees. These schools later developed into virtual training centers for Islamic radicals.
By the mid-1980s, bin Laden had moved to Afghanistan, where he built up an organization, Maktab al-Khidimat (MAK), to recruit Islamic soldiers from around the world who later form the basis of an international network. The MAK maintained recruiting offices in Detroit and Brooklyn in the 1980s.
The Taliban, the former rulers of Afghanistan, arose from the religious schools set up during the mujahideen\'s war against the Soviet invasion. After the Soviet army withdrew in 1989, fighting erupted among mujahideen factions. In response to the chaos, the fundamentalist Taliban was formed and within two years it captured most of the country. The Taliban gave bin Laden sanctuary in 1996.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia and worked in his family\'s construction business. He founded an organization to help veterans of the Afghan war, many of whom went on to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, and the Philippines. Scholars have suggested these loosely connected bands of seasoned soldiers, ready to fight for Islamic causes, form the basis of bin Laden\'s current support.
In 1990, in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait the Saudi government allowed American troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was angry that American soldiers were stationed in the birthplace of Islam. He also charged the Saudi regime with deviating from true Islam .
Bin Laden was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991 because of his anti-government activities. He eventually wound up in Sudan where he worked with Egyptian radical groups in exile.
Yet, even as he is reviled in the West, bin Laden is a hero in parts of the Islamic world, according to intelligence reports. His organization is called al-Qaeda \"the Base,\" and has approximately 3,000 followers, which he funds with his estimated $250 million fortune. Experts have said that bin Laden could represent a new trend in terrorism-privatization. Until his emergence, most large-scale terrorist organizations are believed to have been connected to governments. With his money and disciplined followers, however, bin Laden is believed to have the ability to launch even more devastating terrorist attacks. He has not denied that he is seeking nuclear or chemical weapons, saying that it is a religious duty to defend Islam.
His study & religion:
Bin Laden grew up in Dschidda (Saudi-Arabia) and studied economics at the King-Abdulaziz-University . Other sources say, that he studied civil-engineering. He completed in 1979. At the beginning of the seventies he had connections to religious people. Osama was Saudi-Arabian, so he grew up in tradition of the \"Wahhabiten\", a kind of the sunnite Islam, which developed on the Arabian peninsula. 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 thoughts.
Terroristic attacks associated with Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaida:
February 23, 1993 : A car bomb in the subterranean garage of the World Trade Center killed six people and injured over 1000 people
November 13, 1995: A car bomb in Riad -Saudia Arabia\'s capital- killed seven US-soldiers
June 25, 1996: A terroristic assassination on US-soldiers killed 19 people and injured more than 500 people
assassinations with bombs on the US-embassies in Nairobi and Daressalam
October 12, 2000: suicide assassination on the US-warship \"USS Cole ( DDG-67)\"
September 11, 2001: nearly 3000 people died during the assassinations on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center
April 11, 2002: many people - among other things Germans - died in the synagogue \" al-Ghriba\" on the island Djerba
July 7, 2005: three bombs in the underground station and one in a bus killed up to 56 people
Vocabulary:
Soviet Union - Sowjetunion
assassination/attack - Anschlag
Bedouin - Beduine/inin, beduinisch
Yemen - Jemen
militarian career - Militärische Laufbahn
invasion - gewaltsame Übernahme/Einmarsch
to galvanize s.o. - jemanden wachrütteln
to support - unterstützen
resistance - Widerstand
holy - heilig
ironcally - ironischerweise
to set up - aufsetzen,anordnen
to recruit - Mitarbeiter werben, ergänzen
to maintain - aufrechterhalten, behalten
rulers - Gebieter
to arise - aufkommen,hervorgehen
to withdraw - abheben
to erupt - hervorbrechen,ausbrechen
refugees - Flüchtlinge
to give sanctuary - Asyl geben, Schutz geben
withdrawal - Rückzug, Rücktritt,Ausbrechung
veterans - Veteranen
seasoned soldiers - bewährte Soldaten
Iraqi - Iraker/in , irakisch
troops - Truppen, Kampftruppen
to charge - angreifen, beschuldigen, anklagen
to deviate - abweichen
expelled - vertrieben
eventually - schließlich, letztendlich
to wind up - hängen bleiben, enden
Chechnya - Tschetschenien
to revile - beschimpfen
approximately - annähernd, etwa
estimated - geschätzt
fortune - Vermögen
ability to - die Fähigkeit zu
devastating - verheerend
denied - geleugnet, abgestritten
duty - Treuepflicht, Verpflichtung
civil-engineering - Bau(ingenieur)wesen
to issue - ausfertigen, ausstellen
edict - Erlass
allies - Verbündete
peninsula - Halbinsel
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