Al-Qaeda, officially known as Qaedat al-Jihad, is a multinational militant Sunni Islamic extremist network composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but may also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on non-military and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings, the September 11 attacks, and the 2002 Bali bombings; it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, India, and various other countries.
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, also transliterated as Usama bin Ladin, was a Saudi Arabian-born terrorist and founder of the Pan-Islamic militant organization al-Qaeda. The group is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various countries. Under bin Laden, al-Qaeda was responsible for the September 11 attacks in the United States and many other mass-casualty attacks worldwide. On 2 May 2011, he was killed by U.S. special operations forces at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh is an American investigative journalist and political writer.
The Libertines are an English rock band, formed in London in 1997 by frontmen Carl Barât (vocals/guitar) and Pete Doherty (vocals/guitar). The band, centred on the songwriting partnership of Barât and Doherty, has also included John Hassall (bass), and Gary Powell (drums) for most of its recording career. The band was part of the garage rock revival and spearheaded the movement in the UK.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri was an Egyptian-born terrorist, ideologist and physician who served as the second emir of al-Qaeda from June 16, 2011, until his death.
Peter Doherty is an English musician, songwriter, actor, poet, writer, and artist. He is best known for being co-frontman of The Libertines, which he formed with Carl Barât in 1997. His other musical projects are indie band Babyshambles and Peter Doherty and the Puta Madres.
Saif al-Adel is a former Egyptian Colonel, explosives expert, and a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda who is still at large. Adel is under indictment by the United States for his part in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya.
Abu Musab al-Suri, born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, is a suspected Al-Qaeda member and writer best known for his 1,600-page book The Global Islamic Resistance Call. He has held Spanish citizenship since the late 1980s following marriage to a Spanish woman. He is wanted in Spain for the 1985 El Descanso bombing, which killed eighteen people in a restaurant in Madrid, and in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. He is considered by many as 'the most articulate exponent of the modern jihad and its most sophisticated strategist'.
Nina Antonia is an English author who has chronicled the lives and misadventures of Johnny Thunders, the New York Dolls, Peter Perrett, and the elusive Brett Smiley. Antonia's later work has explored decadent and supernatural themes, which led to a novel, The Greenwood Faun, as well as the editorship of "Incurable"- The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era’s Dark Angel.
Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden is a book by CNN investigative journalist and documentarian Peter Bergen. It was published in November 2001, two months after the September 11 attacks, and was a New York Times Best Seller in 2001.
Hamid Ismailov born May 5, 1954 in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan, is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. He left the BBC on 30 April 2019 after 25 years of service. His works are banned in Uzbekistan.
Peter Bergen is an American journalist, author, and producer who serves as CNN's national security analyst and as New America's vice president. He produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, which aired on CNN.
The Battle of Tora Bora was a military engagement that took place in the cave complex of Tora Bora, eastern Afghanistan, from December 6–17, 2001, during the opening stages of the United States invasion of Afghanistan. It was launched by the United States and its allies with the objective to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of the militant organization al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda and bin Laden were suspected of being responsible for the September 11 attacks three months prior. Tora Bora is located in the White Mountains near the Khyber Pass. The U.S. stated that al-Qaeda had its headquarters there and that it was Bin Laden's location at the time.
Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 a.m. PKT by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group. The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a CIA-led operation with Joint Special Operations Command, commonly known as JSOC, coordinating the Special Mission Units involved in the raid. In addition to SEAL Team Six, participating units under JSOC included the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne)—also known as "Night Stalkers"—and operators from the CIA's Special Activities Division, which recruits heavily from former JSOC Special Mission Units. The operation's success ended a nearly decade-long manhunt for bin Laden, who was wanted for masterminding the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams (1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).
Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, kunya Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar and poet previously associated with al-Qaeda. A veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, he served on al-Qaeda's Shura Council and ran a religious school called the Institute of Islamic Studies in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from the late 1990s until the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Nasser al-Bahri, also known by his kunya or nom de guerre as Abu Jandal – "father of death" or "the killer", was a member of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2000. According to his memoir, he gave his Bay'ah to Osama bin Laden in 1998. He was in al-Qaeda for six years as one of bin Laden's twelve bodyguards, A citizen of Yemen born in Saudi Arabia, al-Bahri was radicalized in his teens by dissident Saudi Ulemas and participated in clandestine political activities which were funded in part by people trafficking. Determined to become a jihadist, he went first to Bosnia and then, briefly, to Somalia before arriving in Afghanistan in 1996 in the hope of joining al-Qaeda, which he soon did. After four years, al-Bahri became "disillusioned", largely because bin Laden consolidated al-Qaeda's relationship with the Taliban by giving his Bayʿah to its leader, Mullah Omar, but also because he had married and become a father.
The September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001 were carried out by 19 hijackers of the militant Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden declared a holy war against the United States, and issued two fatāwā that were released by bin Laden and others in 1996 and 1998. In these fatāwā, bin Laden sharply criticized the American government's financial contributions to the Saudi royal family as well as American military intervention in the Arab world.
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.
No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden (2012) is a military memoir by a former member of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) who participated in the mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. The book was written by Matt Bissonnette under the pen name Mark Owen. It details Owen's career with DEVGRU, including several combat missions in which he participated with the unit. At least half of the book focuses on Owen's participation in the mission that killed bin Laden.
