Tuesday 25 August 2015

Osama al-Absi al-Wahdi

Osama al-Absi al-Wahdi (Arabic: أسامة العبسي آلواحدي‎) or Abu Mohammad al-Julani (Arabic: أبو محمد الجولاني‎), also written as al-Joulani, al-Jolani, al-Jawlani and al-Golani, born as Osama al-'Absi al-Waahdi, is the leader and emir of al-Nusra Front, also known as Jabhat al-Nusra (Arabic: جبهة النصرة‎, full name: جبهة النصرة لأهل الشام Jabhat an-Nuṣrah li-Ahli ash-Shām, "The Support Front for the People of Sham") and is sometimes called Tanzim Qa'edat Al-Jihad fi Bilad Al-Sham or Al-Qaeda in Syria. Al-Julani was listed by the US State Department as a "specially designated global terrorist" on 16 May 2013.

Little is known about Abu Mohammad al-Julani, which is his nom de guerre. The phrase "Al-Julani" is a reference to Syria's Golan Heights, occupied by Israel during the war in 1967. Syrian state television reported in October 2013 that he was killed near Latakia, but SANA (the official Syrian news agency) soon withdrew its report. al-Julani released an audio statement on 28 September 2014, in which he stated he would fight the "United States and its allies" and urged his fighters not to accept help from the West in their battle against ISIS.

A Jordanian security official says only the top echelon in al-Qaeda know al-Julani's real name, but he's commonly known to them as "al-Sheikh al-Fateh" (meaning the Conqueror Sheikh in Arabic).

Biography

Early life and Iraq War

Al-Julani was born in Al-Shahil, near Deir ez-Zor in Syria. His family was originally from the province of Idlib, before moving to Deir ez-Zor. After completing formal education, he entered the Faculty of Medicine at University of Damascus, where he studied for two years, before leaving for Iraq in his third academic year.

Once al-Julani moved to Iraq to fight American troops after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he quickly rose through the ranks of al-Qaeda, and reportedly was a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of the militant group al-Qaeda in Iraq. After al-Zarqawi was killed by a US airstrike in 2006, al-Julani left Iraq, briefly staying in Lebanon, where he offered logistical support for the Jund al-Sham militant group, which follows al-Qaeda's ideology. He returned to Iraq to continue fighting but was arrested by the US military and held at Camp Bucca on Iraq's southern border with Kuwait. At that camp, where the US military held tens of thousands of suspected militants, he taught classical Arabic to other prisoners.

After his release from Camp Bucca prison in 2008, al-Julani resumed his militant work, this time alongside Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was soon appointed head of al-Qaeda operations in Mosul province in Iraq, officially known as Nineveh Province.

Syrian Civil War

Syrian Uprising and foundation of al-Nusra

Shortly after the Syrian uprising began against the Syrian administration headed by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, al-Julani moved into Syrian territory and, fully supported by al-Baghdadi, formed the al-Nusra Front which was first announced in January 2012. Julani was declared the "general emir" of Nusra Front. Under al-Julani’s leadership, Nusra grew into one of the most powerful rebel groups in Syria.

Rise of ISIL
Al-Julani gained prominence in April 2013, when he rejected an attempted takeover of the al-Nusra Front by al-Baghdadi (which revealed a widening rift within al-Qaeda’s global network). Al-Julani distanced himself from claims that the two groups had merged into a group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as announced by al-Baghdadi. Instead, he pledged allegiance directly to al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, who was said to be against al-Baghdadi’s bid to merge both groups, and said his group will continue to use Jabhat al-Nusra as its name. al-Julani was quoted as saying "We inform you that neither the al-Nusra command nor its consultative council, nor its general manager were aware of this announcement. It reached them via the media and if the speech is authentic, we were not consulted." In June 2013, Al Jazeera English reported that it had obtained a letter written by al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, addressed to both Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Abu Mohammad al-Julani, in which he ruled against the merger of the two organizations and appointed an emissary to oversee relations between them and put an end to tensions. Later in the same month, an audio message from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was released in which he rejected al-Zawahiri's ruling and declared that the merger of the two organizations into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was going ahead. Clashes have ensued between al-Nusra Front and ISIL for control of Syrian territory.

Despite some friction with members of the mainstream Free Syrian Army rebel umbrella group, al Julani's Jabhat al-Nusra often work together against Assad's troops in opposition-held areas. The group is more popular in Syria than ISIL, which is largely made up of foreign fighters and has been criticized for its brutality and for trying to impose a strict version of Islamic law in areas under its control. al-Nusra, by contrast, is made up mostly of Syrians, many of whom fought American forces in Iraq.

Resurgence of al-Nusra

Abu Mohammad al-Julani being interviewed by Al-Jazeera journalist Ahmed Mansour, in Idlib, Syria, on 27 May 2015.
In late May 2015, during the Syrian civil war, al-Julani was interviewed by Ahmed Mansour on Qatari news broadcaster Aljazeera, hiding his face. He described the Geneva peace conference as a farce and claimed that the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition did not represent the Syrian people and had no ground presence in Syria. Al-Julani mentioned that al-Nusra have no plans of attacking Western targets, and that their priority is focused on fighting the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Al-Julani is credit with saying that the "Nusra Front doesn’t have any plans or directives to target the West. We received clear orders from Ayman al-Zawahiri not to use Syria as a launching pad to attack the U.S. or Europe in order to not sabotage the true mission against the regime. Maybe Al-Qaeda does that but not here in Syria. Assad forces are fighting us on one end, Hezbollah on another and ISIL on a third front. It is all about their mutual interests."

When asked about al-Nusra's plans for a post-war Syria, al-Julani stated that after the war ended, all factions in the country would be consulted before anyone considered "establishing an Islamic state." He also mentioned that al-Nusra would not target the country's Alawite Muslim minority, despite their support for the Assad regime. "Our war is not a matter of revenge against the Alawites despite the fact that in Islam, they are considered to be heretics." A commentary on this interview however states that al-Julani also added that Alawites would be left alone as long as they abandon elements of their faith which contradict Islam.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar


Mokhtar Belmokhtar (June 1, 1972), also known as Khaled Abou El Abbas or Laaouar, is an Algerian terrorist, leader of the group Al-Murabitoun, former military commander of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and kidnapper, smuggler and weapons dealer. He was twice convicted and sentenced to death in absentia under separate charges in Algerian courts: in 2007 for terrorism and in 2008 for murder; in 2004 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Algeria for terrorist activities.

Born in northern Algeria, Belmokhtar traveled to Afghanistan in 1991 to fight with the mujahadeen against the pro-Soviet government following the withdrawal of Soviet Union troops. There he lost his left eye while mishandling explosives. He later joined the Islamist GIA fighting in the Algerian Civil War and following that became a commander in the Mali-based Islamist Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

In December 2012, Belmokhtar announced he was leaving AQIM and headed his own organisation, dubbed the Al-Mulathameen ("Masked") Brigade (also known as the al-Mua'qi'oon Biddam ("Those who Sign with Blood") Brigade). In January 2013 the Brigade took more than 800 people hostage at the Tigantourine gas facility in Algeria. 39 hostages were executed and one Algerian killed before the facility was recaptured by Algerian forces, who killed 29 members of the Brigade. The Brigade was listed by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in December, 2013.

On 2 March 2013, the Chadian state television and the Chadian Army reported that Belmokhtar had been killed in a raid by Chadian troops against a terrorist base in Mali, however two months later Belmokhtar claimed responsibility for two suicide truck bomb attacks — on a French-owned uranium mine in Arlit, Niger, and a military base 150 miles away in Agadez. On 14 June 2015, Libya's government announced Belmokhtar was killed in a U.S. airstrike inside Libya. U.S. officials confirmed the strike and that Belmokhtar was a target, but did not immediately confirm that Belmokhtar was killed.

Personal life

Mokhtar Belmokhtar was born in Ghardaïa, Algeria, on 1 June 1972. He married four local Northern Malian Arab and Tuareg women from prominent families, cementing his ties in the region. He named a son Osama, after Bin Laden. Omar Ould Hamaha, his uncle by marriage, is the commander of a smaller AQIM offshoot.

Militant activities

Afghan and Algerian civil wars
Belmokhtar became interested in jihad as a schoolboy. In 1991 at the age of 19, he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight with the mujahadeen against the Afghan Communist government in the Civil War in Afghanistan. He trained in al-Qaeda's Afghan camps at Khalden and Jalalabad,

Belmokhtar lost his left eye while mishandling explosives while fighting Afghan government troops in the 1990s. He wore a false eye in its place after then.

He returned in 1993 to his native Algeria. There, he joined the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA), an extremist Islamist organisation that wants to overthrow the Algerian government and replace it with an Islamic state. He fought in the long and bloody Algerian Civil War to overthrow the Algerian government. The GIA massacred civilians, sometimes wiping out entire villages. Belmokhtar reputedly employed a 3 ft 6 in (1.07 m)-tall axe-wielding dwarf named "Mohamed the Dwarf" to slit the throats of 31 men, women, and children and behead them with an axe in public, as part of his effort to impose a strict Islamic government in Algeria. Belmokhtar's fierce reputation earned him prestige with the GIA, and he quickly rose to the rank of commander. But as the GIA began to splinter and fall apart in the late 1990s, Belmokhtar left the organization.

GSPC/AQIM Commander
In 1998, Belmokhtar joined a new splinter group, the militant Algeria-based Islamist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), later known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Its goal is to overthrow the Algerian government and institute an Islamic state, and its members carried out suicide bombings against Algerian government targets. Soon he became an effective GSPC field commander. He went to Tamanrassat, Algeria, to raise money for jihad. He gradually established an elaborate smuggling network in the ninth region, covering southern Algeria where many of the most profitable smuggling routes exist.

He smuggled cigarettes, drugs, stolen cars, diamonds, and people, using the money to buy weapons to supply insurgent groups. He also kidnapped for ransom dozens of Westerners, including diplomats, aid workers, doctors, and tourists from France, Germany, Austria, England, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada. The kidnappings are believed to have netted him what the US State Department estimated as $50 million in ransoms for the Europeans. The global intelligence company Stratfor reported that Belmokhtar commanded an estimated $3 million per European captive. In 2003, for example, he kidnapped 32 French, German, Austrian, and Swiss tourists in the Sahara Desert, for whom he is believed to have received a $6.5 million ransom.

In 2003, the U.S. military had Belmokhtar under surveillance in the desert in northern Mali. Military commanders suggested launching a missile airstrike against him. But Vicki Huddleston, the U.S. Ambassador to Mali at the time, vetoed the operation, arguing that a strike was too risky and that Belmokhtar was not important enough to risk the possible repercussions. General Charles Wald wanted to share intelligence and gear with Algeria and Mali, so they could arrest or kill Belmokhtar, but said that he was over-ruled by civilian U.S. leaders.

In June 2005, Belmokhtar and his men attacked a Mauritanian military garrison in El Mreiti. They killed at least 15 Mauritanian soldiers, and captured a significant number of weapons.

Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb area of operations
By the time GSPC developed into Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in 2006, Belmokhtar's reputation as a hardened fighter, leader, and financier gained him standing with the emir Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud (a.k.a. Abdelmalek Droukdel). He was appointed as a commander of his own brigade of AQIM. Belmokhtar's unit was particularly effective in Mauritania, where it was responsible for several armed attacks and kidnappings.(See 2007 killing of French tourists in Mauritania)

In 2008 his men kidnapped the Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, who were working for the United Nations, and held them for 130 days. In 2008, two US Defense Department officials said that they were concerned that Belmokhtar was subject to increased pressure to stage a large-scale attack in Algeria or Mauritania to confirm his leadership credentials.

In 2011 his men attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in Mauritania, engaging in a drive by shooting of the Israeli embassy and shooting a nightclub that Belmokhtar claimed the ambassador had been in moments earlier.

AQIM is thought to be the wealthiest al-Qaeda branch, after having gained ransoms of tens of millions of dollars for the release of kidnapped western hostages.

As Belmokhtar's power and prestige grew, Wadoud began to view him as a threat to his own power. Wadoud gave more responsibility to Belmokhtar's rival commander Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, to deflect Belmokhtar's growing authority in Algeria and Mali. In late 2012, Belmokhtar was either removed or chose to quit AQIM. Andy Morgan of The Independent opined that Belmokthar was ousted by Wadoud due to his "fractious behaviour".

Letter of complaint

According to the Associated Press, a letter addressed to Belmokhtar ("Abu Khaled"), signed by the 14-member Shura Council of AQIM and dated October 3, details "in page after scathing page" complaints that he "didn't answer his phone when they called, failed to turn in his expense reports, ignored meetings and refused time and again to carry out orders. Most of all, they claimed he had failed to carry out a single spectacular operation, despite the resources at his disposal." The letter describes a delegation sent to contact Belmokhtar that spent three years lost in the desert and then disintegrated without having reached him.

It criticizes his plan to resign and start a separate organization taking orders from al-Qaida central headquarters not AQIM.

Your letter ... contained some amount of backbiting, name-calling and sneering, ... We refrained from wading into this battle in the past out of a hope that the crooked could be straightened by the easiest and softest means. ... But the wound continued to bleed, and in fact increasingly bled, until your last letter arrived, ending any hope of stanching the wound and healing it."

“Why do the successive emirs of the region only have difficulties with you? You in particular every time? Or are all of them wrong and brother Khaled is right?”

AP states the letter, which was found "inside a building formerly occupied" by Belmokhtar fighters in Mali, has been authenticated by three different counterterrorism experts.

Charges and sentencings

In 2003, the United Nations designated Belmokhtar as an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist and the US Treasury Department listed him as a financier of a terrorist organization. In 2004, an Algerian court sentenced him in absentia to lifetime imprisonment for forming "terrorist" groups, robbery, detention, and use of illegal weapons. In 2007, another Algerian court sentenced him to death for forming terrorist groups, carrying out armed attacks, kidnapping foreigners, and importing and trafficking in illegal weapons. In 2008, an Algerian court convicted and sentenced him to death for murdering 13 customs officers. In 2013, a new organization was classified as a terrorist group.

Masked Brigade (Those who Sign with Blood Brigade)
Belmokhtar formed and commanded his own jihadist group, the Islamist al-Mulathameen (Masked) Brigade, or al-Mua'qi'oon Biddam (Those who Sign with Blood) Brigade. Like Wadoud, he continues to pledge allegiance to and take direction from al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri. His group allied with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, another Islamist militant group that had split from Al Qaeda. By mid-January 2013, the two groups held more than a dozen Western hostages.

In Aménas hostage-taking

On 16 January 2013, in the In Aménas hostage crisis, members of Belmokhtar's new brigade attacked the Tiguentourine gas field near In Aménas, Algeria and took more than 800 hostages. He justified the attack as a reprisal for the French intervention that had begun in Mali days before.

Algerian forces made an assault and rescued hundreds of hostages. During the conflict, at least 39 hostages were killed, some executed with a bullet to the head by the Brigade. Algerian special forces killed 29 members of the Brigade and captured three, according to the Algerian government. In a video, Belmokhtar claimed responsibility for the attack, saying: "We are behind the blessed daring operation in Algeria... We did it for al-Qaida." Standing in front of an Islamist black banner associated with al-Qaida, he talked about exacting revenge from France and the US, as Muslims had from the Crusaders.

British Special Air Service and Special Reconnaissance Regiment special forces, French special forces, and American units were mobilised to locate Belmokhtar. A bounty of $100,000 has been placed on him. The U.S. used the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Joint Special Operations Command in the manhunt.

French and Chadian forces killed Abou Zeid in northern Mali on February 25, 2013. His death has been confirmed by several sources.

May 2013 attacks
Belmokhtar claimed responsibility for another terrorist attack on 23 May 2013. In this attack, a French-owned uranium mine in Arlit, Niger, as well as a military base 150 miles away in Agadez, were attacked by suicide bombers with truck bombs. Experts saw no reason to doubt the claim of responsibility. Anouar Boukhars of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace saw the bombing as retaliation for the earlier French intervention in the Northern Mali conflict.

In June 2013 the U.S. government announced a "$5 million reward for information leading to his location".

In August 2013 a communique on the Mauritanian news agency ANI announced the fusion of Belmokhtar's group with MUJAO, another Al Qaida offshoot to form the Al Mourabitoun group. In May 2015, a portion of the group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), however Belmokhtar, who had repeatedly pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, issued a statement rejecting this change of allegiance.

Reports of death

On 2 March 2013, Chadian state television and the Chadian Army reported that Belmokhtar had been killed in a raid by Chadian troops against a terrorist base in the Adrar de Ifhogas mountains in north Mali. The report was not confirmed by other sources. It was refuted by Al Qaeda members on 4 March 2013. A spokesman for Belmokhtar's unit also denied he was killed.

On 14 April, Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno restated his previous claim that the army killed Belmokhtar, saying he blew himself up in despair after learning about the death of Abou Zeïd. Deby said he was "perfectly" sure that Belmokhtar was dead, saying "We identified him". But France, which led the offensive, had as of April 15 only been willing to confirm the death of Abou Zeid, and said it would carry out DNA tests on killed rebels.

On 23 May 2013, Belmokhtar issued a statement confirming the death of Abou Zeid, contradicting Chadian claims of Belmokhtar's death.

On 14 June 2015, Libya's government announced Belmokhtar was killed in a U.S. airstrike inside Libya. However, there is no known confirmation at this point that Mokhtar Belmokhtar is actually dead. U.S. officials confirmed the strike and that Belmokhtar was a target, but did not immediately confirm that Belmokhtar was killed. Libya Herald reported that seven leading members of Libya's Ansar Al-Sharia, including Belmokhtar, were killed in the airstrike outside Ajdabiya. Ansar al-Sharia named seven people it said were killed in the airstrike, but denied Belmokhtar was among them.

Alternate names and sobriquets

Mokhtar Belmokhtar has also been known by the following names: Abu Khaled, Bal'ur, al-Aouer, Khalid Abu al-Abbas, The One-Eyed, The Prince, Laaouar, The Uncatchable, Mr. Marlboro, and MBM. "Abu Khaled" is the nom de guerre used by AQIM. Belmokhtar was nicknamed "one-eyed" in reference to his missing eye and "Mr. Marlboro" due to his running a massive Marlboro cigarette-smuggling operation. Previously, Belmokhtar was also known as the Commander or Emir of the Ninth Region

Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri

Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri (born April 18, 1982) is a citizen of Saudi Arabia suspected of being chief bomb-maker of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He was reported to have been responsible for making the bombs used by his brother Abdullah al-Asiri in his suicide bombing, the 2009 Christmas Day bomb plot, the 2010 cargo plane bomb plot, and the May 8th 2012 Terror Plot.

Biography

Little is known about al-Asiri’s early life; he was born in 1982 into a religious and military family in Riyadh with four brothers and three sisters.

The Saudi Gazette reported that Ibrahim had been imprisoned and released. His imprisonment was a result of an attempt to enter Iraq to join Islamist insurgents. He reportedly left Saudi Arabia for Yemen together with his brother Abdullah al-Asiri — whom he had recruited to al-Qaeda — to join up with al-Qaeda members.

On February 3, 2009, Ibrahim and Abdullah were named on a list of Saudi Arabia's most wanted terrorist suspects. The list published by the Government of Saudi Arabia listed 85 individuals, 83 of whom were Saudis, and 2 were from Yemen.

On August 27, 2009, Abdullah blew himself up in the Jeddah office of security chief Mohammed bin Nayef, after posing as a repentant militant. Abdullah, who had been recruited by Ibrahim as a suicide bomber, used a PETN bomb that his brother had hidden in his rectum. Abdullah died in the attempt, but Nayef survived with minor injuries.

Ibrahim is suspected of being the main explosives expert for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the bombmaker responsible for building the bombs in the 2010 cargo plane bomb plot. He is a likely suspect due to his history of creating explosive devices using PETN, including his involvement in the failed Christmas Day bomb plot. Evidence suggested the same person constructed both the Yemen parcel bombs and the device worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who attempted to ignite the Christmas Day bomb on a plane in 2009. One of the detonators was nearly identical to the one used in the Christmas Day attack.

On 24 March 2011 al-Asiri was added to the U.S. list of terrorists. He is wanted by the government of Saudi Arabia and is the subject of an Interpol Orange Notice.

Al-Asiri had been reported as possibly killed in a drone strike together with other AQAP suspects, among whom was the American-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, during the month of September 2011. However a Yemeni official denied that al-Asiri was killed.

In May 2012, American security officials leaked their acquisition of a document describing how to prepare and use liquid explosive implants -- surgically implanted improvised explosive devices. The implants would contain no metal parts, making them virtually undetectable by X-rays. Al-Asiri was reported to have been responsible for the development of the new weapon.

On August 13, 2013, it was reported that Al-Asiri may have been seriously wounded in a drone strike which occurred on August 10, though the reports were never confirmed.

Al-Asiri was thought to have possibly been killed in a firefight on April 20, 2014. Yemeni troops recovered bodies to run DNA tests, but the tests were not a match.

Family

Al-Asiri's father is a retired soldier. He has three sisters and, now, two surviving brothers

Nasir al-Wuhayshi


Nasir Abdel Karim al-Wuhayshi (Arabic: ناصر عبد الكريم الوحيشي‎Nasir ʿbd al-Karim al-Wahishi; also transliterated as Naser al-Wahishi, Nasser al-Wuhayshi), alias Abu Basir, was a citizen of Yemen and the leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Both Saudi Arabia and Yemen considered al-Wuhayshi to be among their most wanted fugitives. In October 2014, the US State Department increased the reward for any information leading to the capture or killing of al-Wuhayshi to US$10 million, the same as ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Wuhayshi was killed in a US drone strike in the Hadhramaut Governorate of Yemen on 12 June 2015.

Early life, Afghanistan and al-Qaeda

Nasir al-Wuyayshi was born in 1976 in the Mukayras region of what is now the southern province of al-Bayda, Yemen. He spent time in religious institutions in Yemen before travelling to Afghanistan in 1998 and joining al-Qaeda. al-Wuhayshi served as secretary to Osama bin Laden for years in Afghanistan. He left Afghanistan in 2001 and was soon arrested by Iranian authorities, who handed him over to his native Yemen two years later where he was imprisoned without charges. Al-Wuhayshi became the leader of al-Qaeda's Yemeni operations after a previous leader was killed in a US Predator drone strike in 2002. In February 2006, Nasir al-Wuhayshi was one of 23 Yemeni captives who escaped from custody from a maximum security prison in Sana'a. His authority seems to derive mostly from his long proximity to Osama bin Laden.


Foundation and Emir of AQAP

In January 2009, the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen and Saudi Arabia merged and formed Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Ayman Al-Zawahiri confirmed al-Wuhayshi's appointment as leader of AQAP in a video posted online. Nasir al-Wuhayshi and three other men appeared in several threatening videos released in January 2009. Al Wuhayshi published an additional video calling for violence in February. He claimed the increase in western warships off the Horn of Africa to fight piracy were really intended to oppress Islam. According to Yemeni military officials he was killed in southern Yemen on 28 August 2011. On 25 October 2011, AQAP denied that he was killed. On 6 December, al-Wuhayshi released a statement on jihadist websites that AQAP would be intervening in the Siege of Dammaj on the side of Salafi students fighting the Shi'a Houthi militia. A member of a local tribe reported on 22 December that Abdel al-Wuhashi, a younger brother of Nasir, was killed by Yemeni military forces. In 2013, Al-Qaeda Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri appointed al-Wuhayshi as his deputy, speculating that he may be the next Emir of Al-Qaeda. In March 2014, al-Wuhayshi made an appearance in a video celebrating the mass jailbreak of fighters held in Yemeni prisons. Around 400 AQAP fighters were present in what was described as being the largest known gathering of al Qaeda in Yemen. In the video, al-Wuhayshi declared "We have to remove the Cross, and the bearer of the Cross, America."

Death

al-Wuhayshi was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen on 12 June 2015. AQAP released a statement acknowledging his death several days later, and announced Qasim al-Raymi as his successor.

Monday 24 August 2015

Osama bin laden


Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (/oʊˈsɑːmə bɪn moʊˈhɑːmɨd bɪn əˈwɑːd bɪn ˈlɑːdən/; Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎, usāmah bin muḥammad bin 'awaḍ bin lādin; March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011) was the founder of al-Qaeda, the organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a Saudi Arabian, a member of the wealthy bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.

Bin Laden was born to the family of billionaire Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Saudi Arabia. He studied at university in the country until 1979, when he joined mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He helped to fund the mujahideen by funneling arms, money and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and gained popularity among many Arabs. In 1988, he formed al-Qaeda. He was banished from Saudi Arabia in 1992, and shifted his base to Sudan, until U.S. pressure forced him to leave Sudan in 1996. After establishing a new base in Afghanistan, he declared a war against the United States, initiating a series of bombings and related attacks. Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.

From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, as the FBI placed a $25 million bounty on him in their search for him. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during a covert operation conducted by members of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and Central Intelligence Agency SAD/SOG operators on the orders of U.S. President Barack Obama

Name

Further information: Romanization of Arabic
There is no universally accepted standard for transliterating Arabic words and Arabic names into English;[17] however, bin Laden's name is most frequently rendered "Osama bin Laden". The FBI and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as other U.S. governmental agencies, have used either "Usama bin Laden" or "Usama bin Ladin". Less common renderings include "Ussamah bin Ladin" and, in the French-language media, "Oussama ben Laden". Other spellings include "Binladen" or, as used by his family in the West, "Binladin". The decapitalization of bin is based on the convention of leaving short prepositions, articles, and patronymics uncapitalized in surnames; the nasab bin means "son of". The spellings with o and e come from a Persian-influenced pronunciation also used in Afghanistan, where bin Laden spent many years.

Osama bin Laden's full name, Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of Awad, son of Laden". "Mohammed" refers to bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden; "Awad" refers to his grandfather, Awad bin Aboud bin Laden, a Kindite Hadhrami tribesman; "Laden" refers not to bin Laden's great-grandfather, who was named Aboud, but to a more distant ancestor.

The Arabic linguistic convention would be to refer to him as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden", not "bin Laden" alone, as "bin Laden" is a patronymic, not a surname in the Western manner. According to bin Laden's son Omar bin Laden, the family's hereditary surname is "al-Qahtani" (Arabic: القحطاني‎, āl-Qaḥṭānī), but bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden never officially registered the name.[18]

Osama bin Laden had also assumed the kunyah "Abū 'Abdāllāh" ("father of Abdallah"). His admirers have referred to him by several nicknames, including the "Prince" or "Emir" (الأمير, al-Amīr), the "Sheik" (الشيخ, aš-Šaykh), the "Jihadist Sheik" or "Sheik al-Mujahid" (شيخ المجاهد, Šaykh al-Mujāhid), "Hajj" (حج, Ḥajj), and the "Director".[19] The word usāmah (أسامة) means "lion",[20] earning him the nicknames "Lion" and "Lion Sheik".[21]

Early life and education

Main article: Personal life of Osama bin Laden
See also: Bin Laden family
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden[22] was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a son of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a billionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family,[23] and Mohammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas (then called Alia Ghanem).[24] In a 1998 interview, bin Laden gave his birth date as March 10, 1957.[25]

Mohammed bin Laden divorced Hamida soon after Osama bin Laden was born. Mohammed recommended Hamida to Mohammed al-Attas, an associate. Al-Attas married Hamida in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and they are still together.[26] The couple had four children, and bin Laden lived in the new household with three half-brothers and one half-sister.[24] The bin Laden family made $5 billion in the construction industry, of which Osama later inherited around $25–30 million.[27]

Bin Laden was raised as a devout Sunni Muslim.[28] From 1968 to 1976, he attended the élite secular Al-Thager Model School.[24][29] He studied economics and business administration[30] at King Abdulaziz University. Some reports suggest he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979,[31] or a degree in public administration in 1981.[32] One source described him as "hard working";[33] another said he left university during his third year without completing a college degree.[34] At university, bin Laden's main interest was religion, where he was involved in both "interpreting the Quran and jihad" and charitable work.[35] Other interests included writing poetry;[36] reading, with the works of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle said to be among his favorites; black stallions; and association football, in which he enjoyed playing at centre forward and followed the English club Arsenal F.C.[37]

Personal life

In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia, Syria;[38] they were separated before September 11, 2001. Bin Laden's other known wives were Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s); Khairiah Sabar (married 1985); Siham Sabar (married 1987); and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). Some sources also list a sixth wife, name unknown, whose marriage to bin Laden was annulled soon after the ceremony.[39] Bin Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children with his wives.[40][41] Many of bin Laden's children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and as of 2010, Iranian authorities reportedly continue to control their movements.[42]

Nasser al-Bahri, who was bin Laden's personal bodyguard from 1997–2001, details bin Laden's personal life in his memoir. He describes him as a frugal man and strict father, who enjoyed taking his large family on shooting trips and picnics in the desert.[43]

Bin Laden's father Mohammed died in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot misjudged a landing.[44] Bin Laden's eldest half-brother, Salem bin Laden, the subsequent head of the bin Laden family, was killed in 1988 near San Antonio, Texas, in the United States, when he accidentally flew a plane into power lines.[45][citation needed]

The FBI described bin Laden as an adult as tall and thin, between 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in) and 1.98 m (6 ft 6 in) in height and weighing about 73 kilograms (160 lb). Bin Laden had an olive complexion and was left-handed, usually walking with a cane. He wore a plain white turban and he had stopped wearing the traditional Saudi male headdress.[46] Bin Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered in demeanor.[47]

Beliefs and ideology

Main article: Beliefs and ideology of Osama bin Laden
A major component of bin Laden's ideology was the concept that civilians from enemy countries, including women and children, were legitimate targets for jihadists to kill.[48][49] According to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader was motivated by a belief that U.S. foreign policy has oppressed, killed, or otherwise harmed Muslims in the Middle East,[50] condensed in the phrase, "They hate us for what we do, not who we are." Nonetheless, bin Laden criticized the U.S. for its secular form of governance, calling upon Americans to convert to Islam and "reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury", in a letter published in late 2002.[51] His vocal criticism of Western government and society, and his claims that they were dominated by Jews, earned him respect from various sectors of the Euro-American far right.[52]

Bin Laden believed that the Islamic world was in crisis and that the complete restoration of Sharia law would be the only way to "set things right" in the Muslim world. He opposed such alternatives such as secular government,[51] as well as "pan-Arabism, socialism, communism, democracy."[53]

These beliefs, in conjunction with violent jihad, has sometimes been called Qutbism after being promoted by Sayyid Qutb.[54] Bin Laden believed that Afghanistan, under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban, was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world.[55] Bin Laden consistently dwelt on the need for violent jihad to right what he believed were injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the United States and sometimes by other non-Muslim states.[56] He also called for the elimination of the Israeli state, and called upon the United States to withdraw all of its civilians and military personnel from the Middle East, as well as from every Islamic country of the world.

His viewpoints and methods of achieving them had led to him being designated as a terrorist by scholars,[57][58] journalists from The New York Times,[59][60] the BBC,[61] and Qatari news station Al Jazeera,[62] analysts such as Peter Bergen,[63] Michael Scheuer,[64] Marc Sageman,[65] and Bruce Hoffman.[66][67] He was indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in Madrid, New York City, and Tripoli.[68]

Bin Laden was heavily anti-Semitic, stating that most of the negative events that occurred in the world were the direct result of Jewish actions. In a December 1998 interview with Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, bin Laden stated that Operation Desert Fox was proof that Israeli Jews controlled the governments of the United States and United Kingdom, directing them to kill as many Muslims as they could.[69] In a letter released in late 2002, he stated that Jews controlled the civilian media outlets, politics, and economic institutions of the United States.[51] In a May 1998 interview with ABC's John Miller, bin Laden stated that the Israeli state's ultimate goal was to annex the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East into its territory and enslave its peoples, as part of what he called a "Greater Israel".[70] He stated that Jews and Muslims could never get along and that war was "inevitable" between them, and further accused the U.S. of stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment.[70] He claimed that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Department of Defense were controlled by Jews, for the sole purpose of serving the Israeli state's goals.[70] He often delivered warnings against alleged Jewish conspiracies: "These Jews are masters of usury and leaders in treachery. They will leave you nothing, either in this world or the next."[71] Shia Muslims have been listed along with "heretics, [...] America, and Israel" as the four principal "enemies of Islam" at ideology classes of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.[72]

Bin Laden was to opposed music on religious grounds,[73] and his attitude towards technology was mixed. He was interested in "earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants" on the one hand, but rejected "chilled water" on the other.[74]

Bin Laden's overall strategy for achieving his goals against much larger enemies such as the Soviet Union and United States was to lure them into a long war of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender. He believed this would lead to economic collapse of the enemy countries, by "bleeding" them dry.[75] Indeed, al-Qaeda manuals clearly express this strategy. In a 2004 tape broadcast by al-Jazeera, bin Laden spoke of "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy".[76]

Militant activity

Main article: Militant activity of Osama bin Laden
See also: CIA–al-Qaeda controversy
Mujahideen in Afghanistan
After leaving college in 1979, bin Laden went to Pakistan, joined Abdullah Azzam and used money and machinery from his own construction company to help the mujahideen resistance in the Soviet war in Afghanistan.[77] He later told a journalist: "I felt outraged that an injustice had been committed against the people of Afghanistan."[78] Under Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989, the United States provided financial aid and weapons to the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI. Bin Laden met and built relations with Hamid Gul, who was a three-star general in the Pakistani army and head of the ISI agency. Although the United States provided the money and weapons, the training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.

By 1984, bin Laden and Azzam established Maktab al-Khidamat, which funneled money, arms and fighters from around the Arab world into Afghanistan. Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's inherited family fortune[79] paid for air tickets and accommodation, paid for paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihadi fighters. Bin Laden established camps inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and trained volunteers from across the Muslim world to fight against the Soviet puppet regime, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan; he would also participate in some combat activity, such as the Battle of Jaji. It was during this time that he became idolised by many Arabs.[8]

Formation and structuring of al-Qaeda
Main article: Al-Qaeda
By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat. While Azzam acted as support for Afghan fighters, bin Laden wanted a more military role. One of the main points leading to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was Azzam's insistence that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming a separate fighting force.[80] Notes of a meeting of bin Laden and others on August 20, 1988 indicate that al-Qaeda was a formal group by that time: "Basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make his religion victorious." A list of requirements for membership itemized the following: listening ability, good manners, obedience, and making a pledge (bayat) to follow one's superiors.[81]

According to Wright, the group's real name was not used in public pronouncements because "its existence was still a closely held secret".[82] His research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed at an August 11, 1988, meeting between "several senior leaders" of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Azzam, and bin Laden, where it was agreed to join bin Laden's money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan.[83] Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as a hero of jihad. Along with his Arab legion, he was thought to have "brought down the mighty superpower" of the Soviet Union.[84] He was angered by the internecine tribal fighting among the Afghans.[85]

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the royal family at risk. With Iraqi forces on the Saudi border, Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism was potentially inciting internal dissent. Bin Laden met with King Fahd, and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan, telling them not to depend on non-Muslim assistance from the United States and others, and offering to help defend Saudi Arabia with his Arab legion. Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed, and the Saudi monarchy invited the deployment of U.S. forces in Saudi territory.[86] Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi dependence on the U.S. military, arguing the two holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, the cities in which the Prophet Mohamed received and recited Allah's message, should only be defended by Muslims. Bin Laden's criticism of the Saudi monarchy led them to try to silence him. The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division landed in north-eastern Saudi city of Dhahran and was deployed in the desert barely 400 miles from Medina.

Meanwhile, on November 8, 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al-Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed. They discovered copious evidence of terrorist plots, including plans to blow up New York City skyscrapers. This marked the earliest discovery of al-Qaeda terrorist plans outside of Muslim countries. Nosair was eventually convicted in connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and later admitted guilt for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City on November 5, 1990.

Bin Laden continued to speak publicly against the Saudi government, for which the Saudis banished him. In 1992 he went to live in exile in Sudan, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed.

Bin Laden's personal security detail consisted of "bodyguards...personally selected by him." Their "arsenal included SAM-7 and Stinger missiles, AK-47s, RPGs, and PK machine guns (similar to an M60)."

Sudan and return to Afghanistan
In Sudan, bin Laden established a new base for mujahideen operations in Khartoum. He bought a house on Al-Mashtal Street in the affluent Al-Riyadh quarter and a retreat at Soba on the Blue Nile. During his time in Sudan, he heavily invested in the infrastructure, in agriculture and businesses. He was the Sudan agent for the British firm Hunting Surveys, and built roads using the same bulldozers he had employed to construct mountain tracks in Afghanistan. Many of his labourers were the same fighters who had been his comrades in the war against the Soviet Union. He was generous to the poor and popular with the people  He continued to criticize King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In response, in 1994 Fahd stripped bin Laden of his Saudi citizenship and persuaded his family to cut off his $7 million a year stipend.

By that time, bin Laden was being linked with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which made up the core of al-Qaeda. In 1995 the EIJ attempted to assassinate the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The attempt failed, and Sudan expelled the EIJ.

The U.S. State Department accused Sudan of being a "sponsor of international terrorism" and bin Laden of operating "terrorist training camps in the Sudanese desert". According to Sudan officials, however, this stance became obsolete as the Islamist political leader Hassan al-Turabi lost influence in their country. The Sudanese wanted to engage with the U.S. but American officials refused to meet with them even after they had expelled bin Laden. It was not until 2000 that the State Department authorized U.S. intelligence officials to visit Sudan.

The 9/11 Commission Report states:

In late 1995, when Bin Laden was still in Sudan, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin Laden. CIA paramilitary officer Billy Waugh tracked down Bin Ladin in Sudan and prepared an operation to apprehend him, but was denied authorization. U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney encouraged the Sudanese to pursue this course. The Saudis, however, did not want Bin Laden, giving as their reason their revocation of his citizenship. Sudan's minister of defense, Fatih Erwa, has claimed that Sudan offered to hand Bin Laden over to the United States. The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the Sudanese to expel Bin Laden. Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment outstanding against bin Laden in any country.

The 9/11 Commission Report further states:

In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials from the United States and other governments, asking what actions of theirs might ease foreign pressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered to expel Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions, certainly by March. Saudi officials apparently wanted Bin Laden expelled from Sudan. They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and would not tolerate his presence in their country. Also Bin Laden may have no longer felt safe in Sudan, where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, and paid for by the CIA.

Due to the increasing pressure on Sudan from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United States, bin Laden was permitted to leave for a country of his choice. He chose to return to Jalalabad, Afghanistan aboard a chartered flight on May 18, 1996; there he forged a close relationship with Mullah Mohammed Omar. According to the 9/11 Commission, the expulsion from Sudan significantly weakened bin Laden and his organization. Some African intelligence sources have argued that the expulsion left bin Laden without an option other than becoming a full-time radical, and that most of the 300 Afghan Arabs who left with him subsequently became terrorists. Various sources report that bin Laden lost between $20 million and $300 million in Sudan; the government seized his construction equipment, and bin Laden was forced to liquidate his businesses, land, and even his horses.

In August 1996, bin Laden declared war against the United States. Despite the assurance of President George H.W. Bush to King Fahd in 1990, that all U.S. forces based in Saudi Arabia would be withdrawn once the Iraqi threat had been dealt with, by 1996 the Americans were still there. Bush cited the necessity of dealing with the remnants of Saddam's regime (which Bush had chosen not to destroy). Bin Laden's view was that "the 'evils' of the Middle East arose from America's attempt to take over the region and from its support for Israel. Saudi Arabia had been turned into 'an American colony".

He issued a fatwā against the United States, which was first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper. It was entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in Islam. The reference to "occupation" in the fatwā referred to US forces based in Saudi Arabia for the purpose of controlling air space in Iraq, known as Operation Southern Watch.

In Afghanistan, bin Laden and al-Qaeda raised money from "donors from the days of the Soviet jihad", and from the Pakistani ISI to establish more training camps for Mujahideen fighters. Bin Laden effectively took over Ariana Afghan Airlines, which ferried Islamic militants, arms, cash and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, as well as provided false identifications to members of bin Laden's terrorist network. The arms smuggler Viktor Bout helped to run the airline, maintaining planes and loading cargo. Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, concluded that Ariana was being used as a "terrorist taxi service".

Early attacks and aid for attacks
It is believed that the first bombing attack involving bin Laden was the December 29, 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden in which two people were killed.

Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir
interviewing Osama bin Laden in Kabul in 1997. The AKS-74U in the background is a symbol of the mujadin's victory over the Soviets, since these weapons were captured from Spetznaz forces.
It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justification for the killing of innocent people. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander will find a proper reward in death, going to Jannah (Paradise) if they were good Muslims and to Jahannam (hell) if they were bad or non-believers. The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.

In the 1990s, bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially and sometimes militarily in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government. Their advice was heeded. The war that followed caused the deaths of 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with the Islamist surrender to the government.

It has been claimed that bin Laden funded the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997, which killed 62 civilians, and outraged the Egyptian public. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing bin Laden to abandon his Najim Jihad compound and move his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.

Another successful attack was carried out in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his alliance with the Taliban by sending several hundred Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.

In February 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri co-signed a fatwa in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, which declared the killing of North Americans and their allies an "individual duty for every Muslim" to "liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Mecca) from their grip". At the public announcement of the fatwa bin Laden announced that North Americans are "very easy targets". He told the attending journalists, "You will see the results of this in a very short time."

Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri organized an al-Qaeda congress on June 24, 1998 The 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the attention of the United States public for the first time, and resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list.

In December 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center reported to President Bill Clinton that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the United States of America, including the training of personnel to hijack aircraft. At the end of 2000, Richard Clarke revealed that Islamic militants headed by bin Laden had planned a triple attack on January 3, 2000 which would have included bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman and tourists at Mount Nebo and a site on the Jordan River, the sinking of the destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) in Yemen, as well as an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam.

Yugoslav wars
See also: Bosnian mujahideen
A former U.S. State Department official in October 2001 described Bosnia and Herzegovina as a safe haven for terrorists, and asserted that militant elements of the former Sarajevo government were protecting extremists, some with ties to Osama bin Laden. In 1997, Rzeczpospolita, one of the largest Polish daily newspapers, had reported that intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR Brigade suspected that a center for training terrorists from Islamic countries was located in the Bocina Donja village near Maglaj in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1992, hundreds of volunteers joined an "all-mujahedeen unit" called El Moujahed in an abandoned hillside factory, a compound with a hospital and prayer hall.

According to Middle East intelligence reports, bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world through his businesses in Sudan. Among them was Karim Said Atmani, who was identified by authorities as the document forger for a group of Algerians accused of plotting the bombings in the United States. He is a former roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the man arrested at the Canadian-U.S. border in mid-December 1999 with a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials. He was convicted of colluding with Osama bin Laden by a French court.

A Bosnian government search of passport and residency records, conducted at the urging of the United States, revealed other former mujahideen who were linked to the same Algerian group or to other groups of suspected terrorists, and had lived in the area 100 km (60 mi) north of Sarajevo, the capital, in the past few years. Khalil al-Deek was arrested in Jordan in late December 1999 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to blow up tourist sites. A second man with Bosnian citizenship, Hamid Aich, lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity associated with Osama bin Laden. In its June 26, 1997, report on the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, The New York Times noted that those arrested confessed to serving with Bosnian Muslims forces. Further, the captured men also admitted to ties with Osama bin Laden.

In 1999 the press reported that bin Laden and his Tunisian assistant Mehrez Aodouni were granted citizenship and Bosnian passports in 1993 by the government in Sarajevo. This information was denied by the Bosnian government following the September 11 attacks, but it was later found that Aodouni was arrested in Turkey and that at that time he possessed the Bosnian passport. Following this revelation, a new explanation was given that bin Laden "did not personally collect his Bosnian passport" and that officials at the Bosnian embassy in Vienna, which issued the passport, could not have known who bin Laden was at the time. The Bosnian daily Oslobođenje published in 2001 that three men, believed to be linked to bin Laden, were arrested in Sarajevo in July 2001. The three, one of whom was identified as Imad El Misri, were Egyptian nationals. The paper said that two of the suspects were holding Bosnian passports.

By 1998 four members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) were arrested in Albania and extradited to Egypt.

During his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević presented FBI documents that verified bin Laden's al-Qaeda had a presence in the Balkans and aided the Kosovo Liberation Army. The U.S. State Department had identified this as a terrorist organization shortly before the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Milošević had argued that the United States aided the terrorists, which culminated in its backing of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.

September 11 attacks
See also: September 11 attacks and Videos and audio recordings of Osama bin Laden
"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women."
— Osama bin Laden, 2004

United Airlines Flight 175 crashes into the south tower
After his initial denial, Osama bin Laden in 2004 finally claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The attacks involved the hijacking of four commercial passenger aircraft – United Airlines Flight 93, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 11, and American Airlines Flight 77 – and flying two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and the third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, destroying the former, and severely damaging the latter, while the fourth, either intended to target the U.S. Capitol or the White House, crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with no survivors. A total of 2,996 people died in the attacks, including 2,192 civilians, 71 law enforcement officers, and 343 firefighters who were in the World Trade Center and in the surrounding area; 70 civilians and 55 military personnel who were in the Pentagon; and 245 civilians, a law enforcement officer, and the nineteen hijackers aboard the four airliners. In response to the attacks, the United States launched the War on Terror to depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and capture al-Qaeda operatives, and several countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation to preclude future attacks. The CIA's Special Activities Division was given the lead in tracking down and killing or capturing bin Laden. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that classified evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the September 11 attacks is clear and irrefutable. The UK Government reached a similar conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11 attacks, although the government report noted that the evidence presented is not necessarily sufficient to prosecute the case.

Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the attacks. On September 16, 2001, bin Laden read a statement later broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel denying responsibility for the attack. In a videotape recovered by U.S. forces in November 2001 in Jalalabad, bin Laden was seen discussing the attack with Khaled al-Harbi in a way that indicates foreknowledge. The tape was broadcast on various news networks on December 13, 2001. The merits of this translation have been disputed. Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini stated: "This translation is very problematic. At the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic."

2001 video of bin Laden
In the 2004 Osama bin Laden video, bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past statements. In it he said he had personally directed the nineteen hijackers. In the 18-minute tape, played on Al-Jazeera, four days before the American presidential election, bin Laden accused U.S. President George W. Bush of negligence in the hijacking of the planes on September 11. According to the tapes, bin Laden claimed he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Through two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden announced, "I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers. [...] I was responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers [...] with the raids" (May 23, 2006). In the tapes he was seen with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they made preparations for the attacks (videotape broadcast September 7, 2006). Identified motivations of the September 11 attacks include the support of Israel by the United States, presence of the U.S. military in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. enforcement of sanctions against Iraq.

Criminal charges

On March 16, 1998, Libya issued the first official Interpol arrest warrant against bin Laden and three other people. They were charged for killing Silvan Becker, agent of Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in the Terrorism Department, and his wife Vera in Libya on March 10, 1994. Bin Laden was still wanted by the Libyan government at the time of his death. Osama bin Laden was first indicted by a grand jury of the United States on June 8, 1998 on a charges of "conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States" and prosecutors further charged that bin Laden was the head of the terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, and that he was a major financial backer of Islamic fighters worldwide. On November 4, 1998, Osama bin Laden was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on charges of Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, and Attacks on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death for his alleged role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The evidence against bin Laden included courtroom testimony by former al-Qaeda members and satellite phone records, from a phone purchased for him by al-Qaeda procurement agent Ziyad Khaleel in the United States. However the Taliban ruled not to extradite Bin Laden on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence published in the indictments and that non-Muslim courts lacked standing to try Muslims.

Bin Laden became the 456th person listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, when he was added on June 7, 1999, following his indictment along with others for capital crimes in the 1998 embassy attacks. Attempts at assassination and requests for the extradition of bin Laden from the Taliban of Afghanistan were met with failure prior to the bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001. In 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton convinced the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.

Years later, on October 10, 2001, bin Laden appeared as well on the initial list of the top 22 FBI Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by the President of the United States George W. Bush, in direct response to the September 11 attacks, but which was again based on the indictment for the 1998 embassy attack. Bin Laden was among a group of thirteen fugitive terrorists wanted on that latter list for questioning about the 1998 embassy bombings. Bin Laden remains the only fugitive ever to be listed on both FBI fugitive lists.

Despite the multiple indictments listed above and multiple requests, the Taliban refused to extradite Osama bin Laden. They did however offer to try him before an Islamic court if evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 attacks was provided. It was not until eight days after the bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001 that the Taliban finally did offer to turn over Osama bin Laden to a third-party country for trial in return for the United States ending the bombing. This offer was rejected by President Bush stating that this was no longer negotiable, with Bush responding "there's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."

On June 15, 2011, federal prosecutors of the United States of America officially dropped all criminal charges against Osama bin Laden following his death in May.

Pursuit by the United States

U.S. propaganda leaflet used in Afghanistan, with bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri

Clinton administration

Capturing Osama bin Laden had been an objective of the United States government since the presidency of Bill Clinton. Shortly after the September 11 attacks it was revealed that President Clinton had signed a directive authorizing the CIA (and specifically their elite Special Activities Division) to apprehend bin Laden and bring him to the United States to stand trial after the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa; if taking bin Laden alive was deemed impossible, then deadly force was authorized.On August 20, 1998, 66 cruise missiles launched by United States Navy ships in the Arabian Sea struck bin Laden's training camps near Khost in Afghanistan, narrowly missing him by a few hours. In 1999 the CIA, together with Pakistani military intelligence, had prepared a team of approximately 60 Pakistani commandos to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden, but the plan was aborted by the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état; in 2000, foreign operatives working on behalf of the CIA had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through the mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the one in which bin Laden was riding.

In 2000, prior to the September 11 attacks, Paul Bremer characterized the Clinton administration as "correctly focused on bin Laden", while Robert Oakley criticized their "obsession with Osama".

Bush administration

Delta Force GIs disguised as Afghan civilians, while they searched for bin Laden in November 2001
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, U.S. government officials named bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization as the prime suspects and offered a reward of $25 million for information leading to his capture or death. On July 13, 2007, the Senate voted to double the reward to $50 million though the amount was never changed. The Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association offered an additional $2 million reward.

According to The Washington Post, the U.S. government concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the Battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in late 2001, and according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge, failure by the United States to commit enough U.S. ground troops to hunt him led to his escape and was the gravest failure by the United States in the war against al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials assembled what they believed to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the Battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border.

The Washington Post also reported that the CIA unit composed of special operations paramilitary forces dedicated to capturing bin Laden was shut down in late 2005. Bush had previously defended this scaling back of the effort several times, saying, "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority.

U.S. and Afghanistan forces raided the mountain caves in Tora Bora between August 14–16, 2007. The military was drawn to the area after receiving intelligence of a pre-Ramadan meeting held by al-Qaeda members. After killing dozens of al-Qaeda and Taliban members, they did not find either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawah

Obama administration

Situation Room, in which members of the Obama administration track the mission that killed bin Laden
On October 7, 2008, in the second presidential debate, on foreign policy, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged, "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority." Upon being elected, then President-elect Obama expressed his plans to "renew U.S. commitment to finding al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to his national security advisers" in an effort to ratchet up the hunt for the terrorist. President Obama rejected the Bush administration's policy on bin Laden that "conflated all terror threats from al-Qaeda to Hamas to Hezbollah," replacing it with "a covert, laserlike focus on al-Qaeda and its spawn.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in December 2009 that officials had had no reliable information on bin Laden's whereabouts for years. One week later, General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said in December 2009 that al-Qaeda would not be defeated unless its leader, Osama bin Laden, were captured or killed. Testifying to the U.S. Congress, he said that bin Laden had become an "iconic figure, whose survival emboldens al-Qaeda as a franchising organization across the world", and that Obama's deployment of 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan meant that success would be possible. "I don't think that we can finally defeat al-Qaeda until he's captured or killed," McChrystal said of bin Laden. According to him, killing or capturing bin Laden would not spell the end of al-Qaeda, but the movement could not be eradicated while he remained at large.

In April 2011, President Obama ordered a covert operation to kill or capture bin Laden. On May 2, 2011, the White House announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had successfully carried out the operation, killing him in his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan.

Activities and whereabouts after the September 11 attacks

Main article: Location of Osama bin Laden
While referring to Osama bin Laden in a CNN film clip on September 17, 2001, then President George W. Bush stated, "I want justice. There is an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted dead or alive' ". Subsequently, bin Laden retreated further from public contact to avoid capture. Numerous speculative press reports were issued about his whereabouts or even death; some placed bin Laden in different locations during overlapping time periods. None were ever definitively proven. After military offensives in Afghanistan failed to uncover his whereabouts, Pakistan was regularly identified as his suspected hiding place. Some of the conflicting reports regarding bin Laden's continued whereabouts and mistaken claims about his death follow:

On December 11, 2005, a letter from Atiyah Abd al-Rahman to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi indicated that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership were based in the Waziristan region of Pakistan at the time. In the letter, translated by the United States military's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "Atiyah" instructs Zarqawi to "send messengers from your end to Waziristan so that they meet with the brothers of the leadership [...] I am now on a visit to them and I am writing you this letter as I am with them ..." Al-Rahman also indicates that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are "weak" and "have many of their own problems." The letter has been deemed authentic by military and counterterrorism officials, according to The Washington Post.
Al-Qaeda continued to release time-sensitive and professionally verified videos demonstrating bin Laden's continued survival as recently as August 2007. Bin Laden claimed sole responsibility for the September 11 attacks and specifically denied any prior knowledge of them by the Taliban or the Afghan people.
In 2009, a research team led by Thomas W. Gillespie and John A. Agnew of UCLA used satellite-aided geographical analysis to pinpoint three compounds in Parachinar as bin Laden's likely hideouts.
In March 2009, the New York Daily News reported that the hunt for bin Laden had centered in the Chitral District of Pakistan, including the Kalam Valley. Author Rohan Gunaratna stated that captured al-Qaeda leaders had confirmed that bin Laden was hiding in Chitral.
In the first week of December 2009, a Taliban detainee in Pakistan said he had information that bin Laden was in Afghanistan in 2009. The detainee reported that in January or February (2009) he met a trusted contact who had seen bin Laden in Afghanistan about 15 to 20 days earlier. However, on December 6, 2009, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that the United States had had no reliable information on the whereabouts of bin Laden in years.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Gillani rejected claims that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan.
On December 9, 2009, BBC News reported that U.S. Army General Stanley A. McChrystal, who served as Commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan from June 15, 2009 until June 23, 2010, emphasized the continued importance of the capture or killing of bin Laden, thus indicating that the U.S. high command believed that bin Laden was still alive.

On February 2, 2010, Afghan president Hamid Karzai arrived in Saudi Arabia for an official visit. The agenda included discussion of a possible Saudi role in Karzai's plan to reintegrate Taliban militants. During the visit an anonymous official of the Saudi Foreign Ministry declared that the kingdom had no intention of getting involved in peacemaking in Afghanistan unless the Taliban severed ties with extremists and expelled Osama bin Laden.
On June 7, 2010, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Siyassa reported that bin Laden was hiding out in the mountainous town of Savzevar, in northeastern Iran. On June 9, The Australian News's online edition repeated the claim.
On October 18, 2010, an unnamed NATO official suggested that bin Laden was "alive and well and living comfortably" in Pakistan, protected by elements of the country's intelligence services. A senior Pakistani official denied the allegations and said that the accusations were designed to put pressure on the Pakistani government ahead of talks aimed at strengthening ties between Pakistan and the United States.
On April 16, 2011, a leaked Al Jazeera report claimed that bin Laden had been captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
On March 29, 2012 Pakistani newspaper Dawn acquired a report produced by Pakistani security officials, based on interrogation of his three surviving wives, that detailed his movements while living underground in Pakistan.

In a 2010 letter, bin Laden chastised followers who had reinterpreted al-tatarrus—an Islamic doctrine meant to excuse the unintended killing of non-combatants in unusual circumstances—to justify routine massacres of Muslim civilians, which had turned Muslims against the extremist movement. Of the groups affiliated with al-Qaida, Bin Laden condemned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan for an attack on members of a hostile tribe, declaring that "the operation is not justified, as there were casualties of noncombatants." Bin Laden wrote that the tatarrus doctrine "needs to be revisited based on the modern-day context and clear boundaries established." He asked a subordinate to draw up a jihadist code of conduct that would constrain military operations in order to avoid civilian casualties. In Yemen, Bin Laden urged his allies to seek a "truce" that would bring the country "stability" or would at least "show the people that we are careful in keeping ... the Muslims safe on the basis of peace." In Somalia, he called attention to the extreme poverty caused by constant warfare, and he advised al-Shabab to pursue economic development. He instructed his followers around the world to focus on education and persuasion rather than "entering into confrontations" with Islamic political parties.

Whereabouts just prior to his death
In April 2011, various intelligence outlets were able to pinpoint bin Laden's suspected location near Abbottabad, Pakistan. It was previously believed that bin Laden was hiding near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but he was found 160 km (100 mi) away in a three-story mansion in Abbottabad at 34°10′9.51″N 73°14′32.78″E. Bin Laden's mansion was located 1.3 km (0.8 mi) southwest of the Pakistan Military Academy, the country's "West Point". Google Earth maps show that the compound was not present in 2001, but it was present on images taken in 2005.

Death

Main article: Death of Osama bin Laden
See also: Reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden and Osama bin Laden death conspiracy theories

Website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation listing bin Laden as deceased on the Most Wanted List on May 3, 2011 Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 am local time by a United States special forces military unit.

The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was ordered by United States President Barack Obama and carried out in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation by a team of United States Navy SEALs from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or informally by its former name, SEAL Team Six) of the Joint Special Operations Command, with support from CIA operatives on the ground. The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad was launched from Afghanistan.After the raid, reports at the time stated that U.S. forces had taken bin Laden's body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death.

Allegations of Pakistani protection of bin Laden
Main article: Allegations of support system in Pakistan for Osama bin Laden
Critics accused Pakistan's military and security establishment of protecting bin Laden. For example, Mosharraf Zia, a leading Pakistani columnist, stated, "It seems deeply improbable that bin Laden could have been where he was killed without the knowledge of some parts of the Pakistani state." Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari denied that his country's security forces sheltered bin Laden, and called any supposed support for bin Laden by the Pakistani government "baseless speculation". In May 2015, Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize investigative journalist, reconstructed, on the basis of informants inside the CIA and the Pakistani services, a scenario in which Saudi Arabia had continued to financially support Bin Laden during his years of detention by Pakistan's ISI since 2006, that his whereabouts were leaked to the CIA in exchange for a bounty, and that the whole operation to kill him was done with the full knowledge of, and operative assistance from, his former Pakistani protectors.

Bin Laden was killed in what some suggest was his residence for five years. It was an extensive compound located less than a mile from Pakistan Military Academy, probably built for him and less than 100 kilometers' drive from the capital. Carlotta Gall, writing in The New York Times magazine, claimed that the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The Pakistani government's foreign office issued a statement that "categorically denies" any reports by the media that the country's leadership, "civil as well as military, had any prior knowledge of the U.S. operation against Osama bin Laden".

Pakistan's United States envoy, ambassador Husain Haqqani, promised a "full inquiry" into how Pakistani intelligence services was said to have failed to find bin Laden in a fortified compound, just a few hours drive from Islamabad, and stated that "obviously bin Laden did have a support system; the issue is, was that support system within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan

Tiger memon

Ibrahim Mushtaq Abdul Razak Nadim Memon (born November 24, 1960), better known by nickname Tiger Memon one of the prime suspects in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case. He is wanted by Interpol and the CBI. He is a member of D-Company and is a Gang Member of its leader, Dawood Ibrahim. He got the dubious nickname 'Tiger' after helping a petty drugs and weapons smuggler to evade the grips of the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police by driving his car recklessly over 100 km/h on one way roads.

1993 Bombay bombings

His role, the prime accused in the blasts, had been confirmed by the Special Court after the conviction of the others accused in the case. On September 15, 2014 the special TADA court, hearing the long-drawn out case around the 1993 Bombay bombings, convicted four members of the Memon family: Yakub, Essa, Rubina and Yusuf. Three other members of the Memon family — Suleiman, Hanifa and Rahil — have been acquitted with the judge giving them the benefit of the doubt. The four Memons have been held guilty on charges of conspiring and abetting acts of terror. They face jail terms ranging from a minimum of five years to life imprisonment. Yakub Memon, the younger brother of prime accused 'Tiger' Memon, had been charged for possession of unauthorised arms and was executed by hanging on 30 July 2015 at 06:35 IST in Nagpur jail.

Tiger Memon wanted to bomb plane at Sahar Airport to avenge Mumbai riots, says 1993 bomb blasts accused
Atir Khan  New Delhi, Saturday, August 1, 2015

1993 Mumbai bomb blasts
Tiger Memon, the main conspirator in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, had a bigger terror plan. It was aimed at spreading greater panic. This has been revealed by a 1993 Mumbai blasts accused.

Tiger had planned to attack an aircraft at Mumbai's Sahar Airport to avenge the Mumbai riots. But his plan went awry as the team entrusted to carry out the attack backed out.

A silver smuggler-turned-terrorist Tiger's role in the 1993 bomb blasts as one of the main conspirators has been well recorded by the CBI's voluminous probe. Twenty two years after the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, Mail Today brings to you exclusive details of Tiger's plans to explode an aircraft at Mumbai's Sahar Airport.

Confessional statement (a copy of which is available with Mail Today) of one of the accused in the 1993 blasts Nasir Abdul Kadar Kewal revealed Tiger had schemed to bomb an aircraft at the Sahar Airport.

In his statement to CBI, Nasir had said that Tiger had formed a special team to carry out the attack and he was also one of the team members. According to the plan, the team was supposed to wait in a car on the runway and was commissioned to bomb the aircraft as soon as it approached them.

Nasir said he was aware Tiger was a smuggler and a renowned "dada" (underworld operative), who used to travel in a Maruti 1000 car. So, there was pressure on him to comply.

On March 12, 1993 Tiger called him and informed him that he had to carry out a grenade attack at an aircraft at the Sahar Airport. He said Tiger was advised that this attack would not solve their purpose of creating panic as extensive damage to the aircraft was not possible from a distance.

However, Tiger was of the view as long as some damage to the wing of the aircraft was caused it would have served their purpose. But the operation was called off and Tiger fled to Pakistan and the team backed out.

Mail Today also has a copy of transcript of conversation that took place at Yakub Memon's Karachi residence in May 1994. Tiger had also participated in it. This confirms his whereabouts were in Karachi one year after the 1993 blasts. Transcripts also show that the code word used by Memons and their associates to address Pakistan's ISI was International Sports Agency.

This conversation was recorded by Yakub Memon and handed over to CBI to prove his loyalty. However, CBI probe documents which run into thousands of pages also reveal that Yakub, on insistence of Tiger, had provided funds to the 1993 blasts accused.

A top intelligence source said Tiger continues to enjoy support of ISI but there is no record of his involvement in any terror or terrorist motivational activities in the recent past.

Earlier, in one of the disclosures by a terror operative who had come to India to target an oil refinery, Tiger's name had surfaced but no clear-cut evidence of his involvement could be found.

Intelligence sources say Tiger is still living in Karachi under the patronage of ISI. However, he keeps a low profile and has possibly changed his appearance as well. Former home secretary RK Singh, when asked about the whereabouts of the absconders, said both Tiger and Dawood Ibrahim are in Pakistan.

Intelligence sources said it cannot be said with clarity whether Tiger is running his business with Dawood or has started his own gang. It had been confirmed that he had diversified into real estate business and also got into the business of exporting meat to West Asian countries.

In popular culture

The notorious activities of Tiger Memon was a major part of Anurag Kashyap's film Black Friday (2004), which is based on the 1993 Bombay bombings. Memon was played by Bollywood actor Pavan Malhotra.

Syed Salahuddin

Syed Mohammed Yusuf Shah or popularly known as Syed Salahudeen is the head of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a kashmir-based and Islamic Mujahid group operating in Indian administered Kashmir, and head of an "alliance" of Kashmiri mujahid organizations, the Muttahida Jihad Council, that supports annexation of Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan and / or complete freedom of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir from both India and Pakistan. Salahudeen regularly asserts that "the practical mechanism to solve Kashmir dispute is by accepting the right to self-determination". He is listed on the NIA Most Wanted terrorist list.

Early life

Born as the seventh child of middle class parents at Soibugh, Budgam, a village in the Kashmir Valley. His father worked in the Postal Department in the Indian government. Mohammed Yusaf Shah initially became interested in studying medicine, but later on decided to become a civil servant. While studying Political Science at University of Kashmir, he was influenced by the Jamaat-e-Islami, and become a member of its branch in Jammu and Kashmir. At university, he became increasingly radicalized, and got involved in persuading Muslim women to veil themselves (observe orthodox Shariah) and also took part in processions in support of Pakistan. After university, he decided not to join the civil service, as he regarded this as traitorous to the cause of Kashmir, but instead he became an Islamic preacher at a Madrasa. He is married, with five sons. His oldest son, Shakeel Yousuf, works as a medical assistant at Srinagar's Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, second son Javed Yousuf works in the Education Department as computer operator, while Shahid Yousuf is a Research Fellow at the Sher-i-Kashmir University of Agricultural Science and Technology. Shah's fourth son, Wahid Yusuf, studies in Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Government Medical College. Mueed Yusuf, the youngest of Shah's sons, is pursuing a higher education degree (M.Tech.).

Political life

In 1987, Mohammed Yusaf Shah decided to contest J&K assembly election on the ticket of the Muslim United Front, a coalition of political parties in Srinagar's Amirakadal Constituency. He came second after Ghulam Mohiuddin Shah of the moderate National Conference won the seat, amidst allegations of "rigging and bogus polling". Mohammed Yusaf Shah was arrested and put in jail for his violent agitations.

Hizbul Mujahideen

After his release in 1989, he was allegedly threatened by the National Conference with "dire consequences". This convinced him that "armed struggle was the only solution to the Kashmiri problem". He then joined Hizbul Mujahideen founded by Muhammad Ahsan Dar alias "Master" who later parted from Hizbul Mujahideen. He soon took over as the chief of Hizbul Mujahideen with Pakistani [[Inter-Services Intelligence |ISI]] blessings, and then adopted nom de guerre "Sayeed Salahudeen", named after Saladin, the 12th century Muslim political and military leader, who fought in the Crusades.

“ We are fighting Pakistan's war in Kashmir and if it withdraws its support, the war would be fought inside Pakistan, ”
Sayeed Salahudeen

In June 2012 in an interview, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Sayeed Salahuddin accepted that Pakistan had been backing Hizb-ul-Mujahideen for fight in Kashmir. He had declared to start attacking Pakistan if Pakistan stopped backing jihadis in Jammu and Kashmir who, he claimed, were fighting "Pakistan's war".