Osama bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian-born Islamist dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, he participated in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and supported the activities of the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. After issuing his declaration of war against the Americans in 1996, Bin Laden began advocating attacks targeting U.S. assets in several countries, and supervised al-Qaeda’s execution of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001.
There were many video and audio recordings released by Osama bin Laden between 2000 and his death in 2011.
Ramzi Mohammed Abdullah bin al-Shibh is a Yemenite orator and terrorist who served as al-Qaeda's communications officer. He has been detained by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp (NSGB) since 2002. He is accused of being a "key facilitator" for the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (ISBN 0-7432-6823-7) is a 2004 award-winning book by former U.S. chief counter-terrorism advisor Richard A. Clarke, criticizing past and present presidential administrations for the way they handled the War on Terrorism. The book focused much of its criticism on President George W. Bush, charging that he failed to take sufficient action to protect the country in the elevated-threat period before the September 11 attacks and for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Clarke feels greatly hampered the War on Terrorism. The book's title comes from the oath of office taken by all U.S. federal officials, in which they promise to defend the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
The bin Laden family, also spelled bin Ladin, is a wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. It is the namesake and controlling shareholder of Saudi Binladin Group, a multinational construction firm. Following the September 11 attacks, the family became the subject of media attention and scrutiny due to the activities of Osama bin Laden, the former head of al-Qaeda.
Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi, is a Saudi national who was associated with Osama bin Laden's mujahadeen group in the 1980s, and is thought to have rejoined bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the mid-1990s. Also known as Abu Suleiman al-Makki, he has a thick beard and requires the use of a wheelchair.
Michael F. Scheuer, is an American former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, blogger, author, commentator and former adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. One assignment during his 22-year career was serving as Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999. He also served as Special Advisor to the Chief of Alec Station from September 2001 to November 2004.
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California. The first two teams of hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, while the remaining hijackers aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington, D.C., in an attack on the nation's capital. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Arlington County, Virginia, while the fourth plane hijacked by the fourth team crashed in rural Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt. The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history. In response to the attacks, the United States waged the multi-decade global war on terror to eliminate hostile groups deemed terrorist organizations, as well as the foreign governments purported to support them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and several other countries.
Osama bin Laden, the founder and former leader of al-Qaeda, went into hiding following the start of the War in Afghanistan in order to avoid capture by the United States for his role in the September 11 attacks, and having been on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 1999. After evading capture at the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, his whereabouts became unclear, and various rumours about his health, continued role in al-Qaeda, and location were circulated. Bin Laden also released several video and audio recordings during this time.
The 2007 Osama bin Laden video originally appeared in a banner ad on an Islamic militant website regularly used by al-Qaeda on September 6, 2007. The ad carried a picture of bin Laden and the logo of al-Qaeda's media production company As-Sahab. An accompanying translated message read: "Soon, with the permission of God, a new visual tape, the Sheikh, the Lion, Osama bin Laden. May God protect him."
The September 11, 2007 Osama bin Laden video appeared five days after the September 6, 2007, Osama bin Laden video, on the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. It is the second video produced by As-Sahab purportedly featuring a eulogy by Osama bin Laden to the 9/11 hijacker Waleed al-Shehri.
Hamza bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian-born key member of al-Qaeda. On 25 July 2019, it was claimed by the American media that he was killed by a U.S. airstrike on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. In 2024, unconfirmed media reports claimed that he was still alive and a senior leader of al-Qaeda.
There have been several videos released showing Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Osama bin Laden, a militant Islamist and co-founder of al-Qaeda, in conjunction with several other Islamic militant leaders, issued two fatawa – in 1996 and then again in 1998—that military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw support for Israel and withdraw military forces from Islamic countries. He was indicted in United States federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list until his death.
Omar bin Osama bin Mohammed bin 'Awad bin Laden, better known as Omar bin Laden, is a Saudi artist, author, cultural ambassador, and businessman, and fourth-eldest son of Osama bin Laden, with his first cousin and first wife Najwa Ghanhem. He lived in Normandy, France, until October 2023, when the French authorities canceled his residence permit. In October 2024 Bin Laden was barred from returning to the country by the French interior minister Bruno Retailleau for advocating terrorism on social media, a post from the now-deleted account @omarbinladin1.
The September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers of the Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden declared a militant jihad against the United States, and issued two fatawa in 1996 and 1998. In the 1996 fatwa, he quoted the Sword Verse. In both of these fatawa, bin Laden sharply criticized the financial contributions of the American government to the Saudi royal family as well as American military intervention in the Arab world.
Since the early 1990s, several interviews of Osama bin Laden have appeared in the global media. Among these was an interview by Middle East specialist Robert Fisk. In the interviews, Bin Laden acknowledges having instigated bombings in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in 1996 and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2003, but denies involvement with both the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the WTC towers in New York City.
At around 9:30 pm on September 11, 2001, George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), told President George W. Bush and U.S. senior officials that the CIA's Counterterrorism Center had determined that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the September 11 attacks. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation connected the hijackers to al-Qaeda, a militant Salafist Islamist multi-national organization. In a number of video, audio, interview and printed statements, senior members of al-Qaeda have also asserted responsibility for organizing the September 11 attacks.
The death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011, gave rise to various conspiracy theories, hoaxes and rumors. These include the ideas that he had died earlier, or that he lived beyond the reported date. Doubts about Bin Laden's death were fueled by the U.S. military's supposed disposal of his body at sea, the decision to not release any photographic or DNA evidence of Bin Laden's death to the public, the contradicting accounts of the incident, and the 25-minute blackout during the raid on Bin Laden's compound during which a live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the U.S. special forces was cut off.
Mohammed Atef was an Egyptian militant and prominent military chief of al-Qaeda, and a deputy of Osama bin Laden, although Atef's role in the organization was not well known by intelligence agencies for years. He was killed in a US airstrike in November 2001.
