1957-2011
Who Was Osama bin Laden?
Osama bin Laden was a terrorist intent on driving Western influence from the Muslim world. He joined the Afghan resistance when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. After the Soviet withdrawal, bin Laden formed the al Qaeda terrorist network that carried out global strikes against Western interests, culminating in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama announced 54-year-old bin Laden was killed in a terrorist compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden
BORN: March 10, 1957
DIED: May 2, 2011
BIRTHPLACE: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
SPOUSES: Najwa Ghanhem (1974-2001), Khadijah Sharif (1983-1995), Khairah Saber (1985-2011), Siham Sabar (1987-2011), and Amal Ahmed al-Sada (2000-2011)
CHILDREN: 24
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces
Early Life
Osama bin Laden was born Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden on March 10, 1957, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to construction billionaire Mohammed Awad bin Laden and Mohammed’s 10th wife, Syrian-born Alia Ghanem. Bin Laden was the 17th of 52 children born to Mohammad but the only child from his father’s marriage to Alia Ghanem.
Bin Laden’s father started his professional life in the 1930s in relative poverty, working as a porter in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. During his time as a young laborer, Mohammed impressed the royal family with his work on their palaces, which he built at a much lower cost than any of his competitors could and with a much greater attention to detail. By the 1960s, he had managed to land several large government contracts to build extensions on the Mecca, Medina, and Al-Aqsa mosques. He became a highly influential figure in Jeddah; when the city fell on hard financial times, Mohammed used his wealth to pay all civil servants’ wages for the entire kingdom for a six-month period. As a result, Mohammed bin Laden became well respected in his community.
As a father, he was very strict, insisting that all his children live under one roof and observe a rigid religious and moral code. He dealt with his children, especially his sons, as if they were adults and demanded they become confident and self-sufficient at an early age.
Bin Laden, however, barely came to know his father before his parents divorced. After his family split, bin Laden’s mother took him to live with her new husband, Muhammad al-Attas. The couple had four children together, and bin Laden spent most of his childhood living with his step-siblings and attending Al Thagher Model School—at the time the most prestigious high school in Jeddah. His biological father would go on to marry two more times, until his death in a charter plane crash in September 1967.
Radical Education
At the age of 14, bin Laden was recognized as an outstanding, if somewhat shy, student at Al Thagher. As a result, he received a personal invitation to join a small Islamic study group with the promise of earning extra credit. Bin Laden, along with the sons of several prominent Jeddah families, were told the group would memorize the entire Koran, a prestigious accomplishment, by the time they graduated from the institution. But the group soon lost its original focus, and during this time, bin Laden received the beginnings of an education in some of the principles of violent jihad.
The teacher who educated the children, influenced in part by a sect of Islam called The Brotherhood, began instructing his pupils in the importance of instituting a pure Islamic law around the Arab world. Using parables with often-violent endings, their teacher explained that the most loyal observers of Islam would institute the holy word—even if it meant supporting death and destruction. By the second year of their studies, bin Laden and his friends had openly adopted the attitude and styles of teen Islamic activists. They preached the importance of instituting a pure Islamic law at Al Thagher, grew untrimmed beards, and wore shorter pants and wrinkled shirts in imitation of the Prophet’s dress.
Bin Laden graduated from Al Thager in 1976. He then headed to King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where he obtained a degree in 1981. Sources share conflicting information about his area of study; he is believed to have studied either public administration or civil engineering, in an effort to join the family business.
Wives and Children
At the age of 18, bin Laden married his 14-year-old first cousin named Najwa Ghanem, who had been promised to him, and in 1976, the same year he graduated from Al Thager, his first child, a son named Abdullah, was born. Bin Laden and Najwa would have 10 more children before they separated shortly before the 9/11 attacks.
Bin Laden married at least four more times. His second wife, Khadijah, bore him three more children before their 1995 divorce. He remained married to his final three wives—Khairah, Siham, and Amal—until his death in 2011, and they bore him the final 10 of his 24 children. These final three wives remained with bin Laden when he went into hiding in 2001, and they, along with at least eight (and as many as 12) of his children, were with him during the deadly raid on the Abbottabad, Pakistan, hideout during which bin Laden was killed.
Bin Laden’s children are: Abdullah, Abdul Rhman, Saad, Omar, Osman, Muhammad, Fatima, Iman, Ladin “Bakir,” Rukhiya, Nour, Ali, Amer, Aisha, Hamza, Kadhija, Khalid, Miriam, Sumaiya, Safiyah, Aasia, Ibrahim, Zainab, and Hussain.
At least two of bin Laden’s sons were killed during U.S. military options. Saad died during a military drone attack in 2009, and in 2019, President Donald Trump announced that Hamza bin Laden had been killed during an anti-terrorist campaign, believed to have occurred between 2017 and early 2019.
From Hero to Exile
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden joined the Afghan resistance, believing it was his duty as a Muslim to fight the occupation. He relocated to Peshawar, Afghanistan, and using aid from the United States under the CIA program Operation Cyclone, he began training a mujahideen, which is a group of Islamic jihadists. After the Soviets withdrew from the country in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia as a hero, and the United States referred to him and his soldiers as “Freedom Fighters.”
Yet, bin Laden was quickly disappointed with what he believed was a corrupt Saudi government, and his frustration with the U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War led to a growing rift between bin Laden and his country’s leaders. Bin Laden spoke publicly against the Saudi government’s reliance on American troops, believing their presence profaned sacred soil. After several attempts to silence bin Laden, the Saudis banished the former hero. He lived in exile in Sudan beginning in 1992.
Formation of al Qaeda
By 1993, bin Laden had formed a secret network known as al Qaeda (Arabic for “the Base”), comprised of militant Muslims he had met while serving in Afghanistan. He recruited soldiers based on their ability to listen, their good manners, obedience, and their pledge to follow their superiors. Their goal was to take up the jihadist cause around the world, righting perceived wrongs under the accordance of pure Islamic law. Under bin Laden’s leadership, the group funded and began organizing global attacks worldwide. By 1994, after continued advocacy of extremist jihad, the Saudi government forced bin Laden to relinquish his Saudi citizenship and confiscated his passport. His family also disowned him, cutting off his $7 million yearly stipend.
Undeterred, bin Laden began executing his violent plans, with the goal of drawing the United States into war. His hope was that Muslims, unified by the battle, would create a single, true Islamic state. In 1996, to forward his goal, al Qaeda detonated truck bombs against U.S. occupied forces in Saudi Arabia. The next year, they claimed responsibility for killing tourists in Egypt, and in 1998, they bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania, killing nearly 300 people in the process.
Bin Laden’s actions abroad didn’t go unnoticed by the Sudanese government, and he was exiled from their country in 1996. Not able to return to Saudi Arabia, bin Laden took refuge in Afghanistan, where he received protection from the country’s ruling Taliban militia. While under the protection of the Taliban, bin Laden issued a series of fatwas, or religious statements, that declared a holy war against the United States. Among the accusations reared at America were the pillaging of natural resources in the Muslim world and assisting the enemies of Islam.
While bin Laden likely used his own money to fund early training and operational costs for al Qaeda, the extent of his personal wealth at this time remains unknown. Some early estimates claimed he was worth more than $250 million, though that was likely vastly overstated. He had spent millions setting up businesses and operations in Sudan, only to have that government seize his assets when he was forced to leave the country in 1996.
9/11 Attacks
By 2001, bin Laden had attempted and often successfully executed attacks on several countries using the help of al Qaeda–trained terrorists. On September 11, 2001, bin Laden delivered his most devastating blow to the United States. A small group of bin Laden’s al Qaeda jihadists hijacked four commercial passenger planes in the United States, two of which collided into the World Trade Center towers. Another aircraft crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane was successfully retaken and crashed in Pennsylvania. The intended target of the final aircraft was believed to be the United States Capitol. In all, the attack killed nearly 3,000 civilians.
Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, In response, the U.S. government under President George W. Bush helped lead what became known as the global war on terror, an international coalition designed to thwart future terrorist acts. In October 2001, a joint U.S.-British attack on Afghanistan was launched, aimed at capturing al Qaeda’s leader and overthrowing the Taliban. Taliban leadership collapsed by the end of 2001, as bin Laden went into hiding. For more than 10 years, he was hunted along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In 2004, shortly before President Bush’s reelection, bin Laden released a videotaped message publicly claiming responsibility for the attacks on 9/11 for the first time.
The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan lasted for nearly two decades, including periods of fierce counterinsurgent fighting against the Taliban. The final American forces didn’t leave Afghanistan until 2021. The U.S. would be similarly ensnared in the Iraq War, a conflict that began in 2003 based on later-discredited intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and had provided support for al Qaeda, including the 9/11 attacks.
Death
Osama bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, in a terrorist compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. President Barack Obama announced the 57-year-old’s death that day.
“For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and our allies,” Obama said in a late-night address to the nation on the night of bin Laden’s death. “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.” He added that “his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”
Bin Laden’s death was the result of an eight-month plan the president enacted and CIA Director Leon Panetta led. Approximately two dozen members of a classified American special forces unit—called Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru (formerly known as SEAL Team Six)—raided bin Laden’s hideout. Bin Laden was shot several times. The Navy unit took his body as evidence of his death. He was identified, in part, thanks to his significant height of more than 6-foot-4, and DNA tests revealed that the body was, in fact, his.
Bin Laden Family and King Charles III
In June 2022, months before he acceded to the British throne as Charles III, reports emerged that in 2013, the then-Prince of Wales’ foundation, The Prince of Wales Charitable Fund, had accepted a $1.21 million donation from Bakr and Shafiq bin Laden, two of Osama bin Laden’s half-brothers. Charles denied charges that he had personally solicited the donation, insisting the decision to accept the donation was made by the charity’s trustees. Neither bin Laden brother has any known connection to terrorist activities, and both had previously disowned Osama bin Laden (as had many others in the extended bin Laden family) beginning in the mid-1990s.
Bin Laden in Media
Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 attacks, and its aftermath have been the subject of numerous books and documentaries, as well as television series and films. The 2018 Hulu limited series The Looming Tower, based on Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book of the same name, tracked the rise of Al Qaeda and the failures of U.S. intelligence services to prevent the September 11 attacks. Director Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2013) depicted the decade-long hunt for bin Laden and starred Jessica Chastain as a fictional CIA analyst. The film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Chastain. National Geographic Channel’s 2012 limited series SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden chronicled the clandestine raid in Pakistan that led to bin Laden’s death.
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