C O L U M B I A ɀ S O U T H C A R O L I N A

MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011 ɀ WWW.THESTATE.COM ɀ PAGE S1

SPECIALREPORT

‘JUSTICE HAS
BEEN DONE’
President tells nation the world’s most wanted terrorist, al-Qaida leader
Osama bin Laden, has been killed in a U.S. operation in Pakistan
By RICK MONTGOMERY and SCOTT CANON
McClatchy Newspapers

The tall, lean, rich man’s son

could have spent his life
lounging about Saudi Arabia
in luxury. Instead, Osama bin
Laden chose to kill.
As a young man, he shot at
Soviet invaders in Afghani-
stan. In middle age, he turned
his wrath and far-reaching re-
sources against the United
States — the superpower he
saw as spoiler of his home-
land’s sacred cities.
By the time of his death, his
was the face of terrorism.
President Barack Obama
announced from the White
House late Sunday that bin
Laden had been killed by a
special operation in Pakistan.
His body is in the custody of
U.S. officials.
SEE BIN LADEN PAGE S2

This April
1998 file
photo shows
exiled al
Qaida leader
Osama bin
Laden in
Afghanistan.
Bin Laden is
dead and the
U.S. has his
body.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Barack Obama made a televised statement on the death of Osama bin Laden from the East Room of
the White House in Washington late Sunday.

Note to readers: Check thestate.com for the latest updates

S2 MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011 ● WWW.THESTATE.COM
TIMELINE
Osama bin Laden —
Events in the life of Osa-
ma bin Laden and terror-
ist attacks connected to
him:
1957 Born in Saudi
Arabia, 17th of 52
children of Saudi
construction millionaire
1979 Receives civil
engineering degree from
Abdul Aziz University;
goes to Pakistan to meet
CIA-funded anti-Soviet
Afghan guerrillas known
as mujahadeen
1984 Opens base in
Peshawar, Pakistan, for
Arabs arriving to fight
Soviets
1986 Develops Afghan
camps; reportedly takes
part in some battles;
helps build CIA-funded
tunnel complex near
Khost, Afghanistan
1988 Organizes Egyptian
Islamic Jihad, other
militant Muslims to form
al-Qaida (Arabic for “the
base”) to overthrow
corrupt Muslim
governments
1989 Soviets leave
Afghanistan; bin Laden
returns to Saudi Arabia
1990 Works in family
construction business;
criticizes Saudi
government for inviting
U.S. troops to expel Iraq
from Kuwait
1991 Expelled from Saudi
Arabia for
anti-government
activities; goes to
Afghanistan briefly, then
Sudan
1993 Car bomb at N.Y.
World Trade Center kills
six; Muslim radicals with
bin Laden links later
convicted; 18 U.S. troops
in Somalia killed; Somalis
trained by bin Laden
supporters suspected
1994 U.S. intelligence
says bin Laden financing
terror training camps in
Sudan; Saudi Arabia
revokes bin Laden’s
citizenship, seizes assets
1996 At U.S. request,
Sudan expels bin Laden;
he moves to Afghanistan;
car bomb kills 19 at U.S.
military housing in Saudi
Arabia; bin
Laden-financed Taliban
take over Afghan
government
1998 Al-Qaida calls on all
Muslims to “confront,
fight and kill Americans
and Britons”; bombings
of U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania kill
220 people; U.S. cruise
missile attack on
al-Qaida headquarters in
Afghanistan
1999 U.S. presses
Taliban to turn over bin
Laden; he is moved to
secret location
2000 Bombing of U.S.
destroyer Cole in Aden,
Yemen, kills 17 sailors
2001 Four bin Laden
followers convicted in
U.S. embassy bombings;
hijackers fly jetliners into
World Trade Center and
Pentagon; U.S., U.K. and
anti-Taliban Afghans
mount air and land
attacks on al-Qaida and
Taliban
2002-03 Broadcast of
video, audio tapes of
person who purportedly
is bin Laden
2003 Suspected
mastermind of Sept. 11
attacks, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, arrested in
Pakistan
2004 Madrid train
bombings kill at least
170; Islamic militants
with al-Qaida links
suspected
2005 London
underground bombings
kill 52; authorities link
al-Qaida to attacks
May 1, 2011 President
Barack Obama
announces bin Laden is
dead
● THE STATE, COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA
A crowd outside the White House in Washington, D.C., cheers upon hearing the news that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is dead.
BIN LADEN
FROM PAGE S1
“Justice has been done,”
the president said.
In the mind of the Ameri-
can public, bin Laden was of-
ten seen as the person whose
sinister creativity resulted in
atrocities committed in the
name of Islamic fanaticism.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham,
on his Facebook page, said,
“This day has been long-
awaited by our nation and all
those who reject terrorism.
This event by no means ends
our fight against al-Qaida,
but it is a decisive moment
helping create momentum
for our cause throughout the
world.”
Experts said bin Laden
served more as idol and moti-
vator to militant Muslims
who were convinced that
America’s support of Israel
and its presence in Saudi
Arabia — home to the holy
places of Medina and Mecca
— demanded bloodshed.
Bin Laden’s charismatic
ways, his fortune and his
ability to extract money from
other wealthy Islamic ex-
tremists gave sophistication
and firepower to a terrorism
campaign that had been
lurching from one haphazard
car bombing to the next.
Without bin Laden, the ter-
rorist hijackers may well
have stayed home to wage
their protests, never to imag-
ine unleashing attacks in the
United States.
“I was the most optimistic”
that destruction and death at
the World Trade Center
would be massive, bin Laden
declared with characteristic
hubris in a videotape.
Once seen by Washington
as a freedom fighter, bin Lad-
en launched the militant or-
ganization al-Qaida during
the Soviet Union’s invasion
of Afghanistan. Over the
years, al-Qaida provided
training to as many as 11,000
men who passed through its
terrorist camps in
Afghanistan.
Al-Qaida is now thought to
have secret soldiers in four
dozen countries.
Federal authorities have
implicated bin Laden in some
of the bloodiest crimes of the
past decade: The 1993 bomb-
In this file
image,
Osama Bin
Laden, the
al Qaida
leader,
appears on
this layout
for an FBI
poster after
he was
placed on
the FBI’s
Ten Most
Wanted list
in June
1999, in
connection
with the
bombings
of the U.S.
Embassies
in Tanzania
and Kenya.
ing of the World Trade Cen-
ter. The 1998 bombings of
U.S. embassies in Tanzania
and Kenya. The 2000 bomb-
ing of the USS Cole in
Yemen.
As for the Sept. 11 atroci-
ties, the terrorist leader made
clear his satisfaction, if not
his responsibility.
The so-called “smoking-
gun” videotape of bin Laden
meeting with supporters nev-
er caught him saying outright
that he ordered the attacks.
But, clearly, here was a man
who relished whatever role
he played in the murder of
American civilians.
He boasted with a grin:
“We calculated in advance
the number of…enemy who
would be killed.”
LEGEND AND REALITY
He was born Osama bin
Muhammad bin Awad bin
Laden in Jiddah, Saudi Ara-
bia. Most accounts placed his
birth in 1957, although he
suggested different years to
different interviewers.
He reportedly was the 17th
of Muhammad bin Laden’s
50-plus children. He was also
said to be his Syrian mother’s
only child, an indication she
was among the patriarch’s
least-favored wives.
Legend had it that Mu-
hammed bin Laden was illit-
erate when he emigrated on
foot from his homeland of Ye-
men to Saudi Arabia. Once
there he slowly cobbled to-
gether a construction busi-
ness that, with the eventual
help of his sons, grew to a $5
billion enterprise.
Osama bin Laden’s early
years were comfortable — a
far cry from the angry lives of
many young radicals whom
his terrorist camps later
trained. A devout Sunni Mus-
lim, he attended Saudi Arabi-
an schools and studied eco-
nomics and management in
college.
His family’s business won
important contracts to re-
build mosques. But being a
younger son, bin Laden did
not figure prominently in the
family hierarchy or its
decision-making.
The 1979 Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan upended
what could have been a life of
ease for the man in his early
20s.
Candles and flowers stand outside the firehouse of
Squad Co. 1 in New York’s Brooklyn borough Sept.
19, 2001, honoring the 343 firefighters lost in the
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Galvanized by what he saw
as an epic battle between
Muslims and godless com-
munists, he joined the Af-
ghan resistance. He is
thought to have used some of
his family’s wealth to import
weapons and to recruit Mus-
lims from Egypt, Turkey,
Lebanon — in time, even the
United States.
His fighters were backed
by American and Saudi tax
dollars and advised by the
Central Intelligence Agency.
By the mid-1980s, the guer-
rilla commander had bonded
with the Egyptian Islamic Ji-
had, a terrorist group that
helped to assassinate Presi-
dent Anwar Sadat. One of its
key leaders, Ayman al Za-
wahri, would have a strong
influence and eventually be a
brother-in-arms.
In the late 1980s, bin Laden
began to tell followers of a vi-
sion that had come to him of a
global jihad to be waged by
Muslims around the world.
So evolved al-Qaida, Ara-
bic for “the base.”
After the Soviet withdraw-
al from Afghanistan in 1989,
bin Laden returned to Saudi
Arabia a hero, working brief-
ly in the family business. A
sought-after speaker, he also
released a quarter-million
cassette tapes that outlined a
new enemy in his sights.
“When we buy American
goods,” he said in one tape,
“we are accomplices in the
murder of Palestinians. …
The United States uses that
money to send a billion (dol-
lars) a year to Israel.”
His anti-Western rhetoric
intensified in 1990, when
Saudi rulers allowed Ameri-
can military personnel to use
the birthplace of Islam as a
staging ground for the Gulf
War. Bin Laden cast it as a
desecration of a holy site. He
accused the Saudi royal fami-
SPECIAL REPORT
MANUEL BALCE CENETA/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROBERT SPENCER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ly of being as vile as the
Americans.
His radical reading of Qur-
’an scripture called for vio-
lence to eradicate from Islam
all traces of secular culture —
from pop music to modern
fashions to U.S. soldiers.
Saudi Arabia expelled bin
Laden in 1991 because of his
anti-government activities.
He wound up in Sudan,
which expelled him in 1996
under pressure from Ameri-
can and Saudi diplomats.
HOLY WAR
By this time, American in-
terests were being targeted
by al-Qaida, composed large-
ly of Afghan war veterans.
Bin Laden personally
claimed responsibility for the
deaths of 18 American sol-
diers associated with the
1993 downing of a U.S. Army
helicopter in Somalia.
That same year, a truck
bomb exploded in an under-
ground garage of the World
Trade Center. Investigators
linked bin Laden to a loose
organization of Islamic ex-
tremists recruiting terrorists
in the United States.
What ostensibly had begun
as a battle to liberate Afghan-
istan and Islam’s three holi-
est places — Mecca, Medina
and Jerusalem — would soon
become a holy war, a jihad,
against the United States.
“Kill the Americans and
plunder their money wherev-
er they find it,” bin Laden
wrote in his 1998 fatwa, or
holy decree. He accused
Americans of waging war on
God.
The terrorist leader once
compared jihad against the
Western world to the Af-
ghans’ successful stand
against the Soviets.
“The flag of the Soviet
Union was folded once and
for all” because of the Mus-
lim resistance, bin Laden
said. “It was thrown in the
wastebasket.
“We are certain that we
shall, with the grace of Allah,
prevail over the Americans
and over the Jews.”
His own siblings back in
the Saudi construction trade
disowned him.
Some reports suggested he
had financed terrorism using
an inheritance from his fa-
ther. By other accounts, al-
Qaida tapped a variety of
funds from Islamic charities,
African gem miners and Mid-
dle Eastern honey
merchants.
Analysts concluded bin Lad-
en was less the chief executive
of a single organization than an
idea man, the coordinator of a
diffuse movement.
However scattered, the op-
eration was high-tech and
elusive. Al-Qaida embedded
coded messages in innocu-
ous-looking Web sites, stored
bomb recipes on CD-ROMs.
Bin Laden used couriers to
communicate with his agents
face to face. His plotters rare-
ly gave themselves away.
U.S. intelligence officers
for years tried to track the ter-
rorists’ activities from an of-
fice known as the bin Laden
Room, deep within CIA
headquarters.
He became the interna-
tional poster boy of terror
when American authorities
accused the gaunt,
150-pound man in the 1998
bombings of two U.S. embas-
sies in Africa, in which more
than 250 persons died.
Some experts accused the
Clinton administration of try-
ing to personify faceless terror
by pointing to a known figure
when obscure others were set-
ting off bombs. U.S. lawmakers
resented what they considered
a “bogeyman” ploy to get them
to appropriate more money for
intelligence.
In 2000 many doubters
were silenced. A bomb-laden
suicide boat bobbing in a Ye-
meni harbor blew a hole in
the USS Cole, killing 17
American sailors. The plot
had bin Laden’s fingerprints
all over it, authorities said.
THE BLACK DAY
The Sept. 11 onslaught on
America came three years after
bin Laden warned of a “black
day for Americans … when we
do not differentiate between
the military and civilians.”
With a $25 million bounty
on his head and worldwide
pressure on Islamic nations
to root him out, once friendly
Pakistan, Yemen and Iran
turned their backs. Only Af-
ghanistan’s ruling Taliban of-
fered safe haven, as it had
since 1996.
Most of the Arab world re-
mained calm amid U.S. mili-
tary strikes on Afghanistan.
Even the most radical Mus-
lim groups backed off their
cheerleading for bin Laden,
figuring his once-heroic stat-
ure was crumbling.
“The vast, vast majority of
Muslims in the Middle East find
him to be a despicable charac-
ter,” said Wake Forest Universi-
ty religion department chair-
man Charles Kimball, shortly
after the terrorist strikes.
The Associated Press
contributed.