Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, }} (10 March 19572 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. Provided by Wikipedia