OSAMAH BIN LADIN FULL STROY BY MUHAMMAD USMAN BABAR
Childhood, education and personal life
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,a son of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a wealthy businessman with close ties to the Saudi royal family, and Mohammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas (then called Alia Ghanem). In a 1998 interview, Osama gave his birth date as March 10, 1957.
Osama's parents divorced soon after he was born; Osama's mother then
remarried Mohammed al-Attas. The couple had four children, and Osama lived in the new household with three half-brothers and one half-sister.
Osama was raised as a devout Wahhabi Muslim. From 1968 to 1976, he attended the élite secular Al-Thager Model School. He studied economics and business administration
at King Abdulaziz University. Some reports suggest he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979, or a degree in public administration in 1981. One source described him as "hard working",; another said he left university during his third year without completing a college degree.At university, Osama's main interest was religion, where he was involved in both "interpreting the Quran and jihad" and charitable work. Other interests included writing poetry;
[ reading, with the works of Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle said to be among his favorites; black stallions; and football, in which he enjoyed playing at centre forward and followed the fortunes of Arsenal F.C..
In 1974, at the age of 17, Osama married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia; Najwa divorced him in 2001 before the attacks. He married five other women: Khadijah Sharif (1983), who divorced him in the 1990s; Khairiah Sabar (1985), whose fate is unknown; Siham Sabar (1987), whose fate is also unknown; an unknown wife with whom his marriage was immediately annulled; and Amal al-Sadah (2000). Through these women bin Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children. Many of bin Laden's children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and as of 2010 Iranian authorities reportedly continued to control their movement.
Bin Laden's father Mohammed died in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot misjudged a landing.Osama'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.
The FBI described Osama as an adult as tall and thin, between 6 ft. 4 in and 6 ft. 6 in. (193– 198 cm) in height and weighing about 165 pounds (75 kg). Interviewer Lawrence Wright, on the other hand, described him as quite slender, but not particularly tall. Osama 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. Bin Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild mannered in demeanor.
Beliefs and ideology
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, condensed in the phrase "They hate us for what we do, not who we are."
Bin Laden also said that only the restoration of Sharia law would "set things right" in the Muslim world, and that alternatives such as "pan-Arabism, socialism, communism, democracy" must be opposed. This belief, in conjunction with violent jihad, has sometimes been called Qutbism after being promoted by Sayyid Qutb.[40Bin Laden believed that Afghanistan, under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban, was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world. 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, the need to eliminate the state of Israel, and the necessity of forcing the United States to withdraw from the Middle East. He also called on Americans to "reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury," in an October 2002 letter.
Bin Laden's ideology included the idea that civilians, including women and children, are legitimate targets of jihad. Bin Laden was anti-Semitic, and 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."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.
Bin Laden opposed music on religious grounds,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.
His viewpoints and methods of achieving them had led to him being designated as a terrorist by scholars,[ journalists from The New York Times,[ the BBC,and Qatari news station Al Jazeera,analysts such as Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer, Marc Sageman,and Bruce Hoffman and he was indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in Madrid, New York City, and Tripoli.
Bin Laden's overall strategy 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 nation. Al-Qaeda manuals clearly outline this strategy. The Soviet Union collapsed following years of fighting in Afghanistan, and several prominent authors have stated that the United States was on the verge of suffering the same fate, losing countless trillions of dollars to the ongoing conflict. In this sense, some have credited bin Laden as the one person who was successful in his fight against both of the world superpowers.
Militant activity
Mujahideen in Afghanistan
After leaving college in 1979, bin Laden arrived to Pakistan and joined Abdullah Azzam to take part in the Soviet war in Afghanistan.During Operation Cyclon from 1979 to 1989, the United States provided financial aid and weapons to the mujahideen leaders through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (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 fortunepaid 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 used it to train volunteer fighters against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. It was during his time in Pakistan that he began wearing camouflage-print jackets and carrying a Russian-made assault rifle.
Formation and structuring of 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. Notes of a meeting of bin Laden and others on August 20, 1988, indicate 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.
According to Wright, the group's real name wasn't used in public pronouncements because "its existence was still a closely held secret." 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. 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, who along with his Arab legion "had brought down the mighty superpower" of the Soviet Union.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990 put the Saudi kingdom and the House of Saud at risk, with Iraqi forces on the Saudi border and Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism 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, offering to help defend Saudi Arabia with his mujahideen. Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed, and after the Saudi monarchy invited the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi territory,Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military. Bin Laden believed the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. Bin Laden's criticism of the Saudi monarchy led that government to attempt to silence him.
Shortly after Saudi Arabia invited U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia, bin Laden turned his attention to attacks on the West. On November 8, 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al-Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed, discovering 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 on November 5, 1990.
Bin Laden continued to speak publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops, for which the Saudis banished him. He went to live in exile in Sudan, in 1992, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed.
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.
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 their 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 but the war that followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with Islamist surrender to the government.
Bin Laden funded the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997, which killed 62 civilians, but outraged the Egyptian public. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing bin Laden to abandon his Nazim 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 hundreds of 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
September 11 attacks
"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
After repeated denials, in 2004, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The attacks involved the hijacking of four commercial passenger aircraft, the subsequent destruction of those planes and the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, severe damage to The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the deaths of 2,974 people and the nineteen hijackers. In response to the attacks, the United States launched a 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 attacks of September 11 is clear and irrefutable. The UK Government reached a similar conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11, 2001 attacks, although the government report notes that the evidence presented is not necessarily sufficient for a prosecutable 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.
[123] 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."
In the 2004 Osama bin Laden video, bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past statements. In it he stated 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 on 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.
In two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden announces,
I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers [...] I was responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers [...] with the raids [5 minute audiotape broadcast May 23, 2006],
and is seen with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they make preparations for the attacks (videotape broadcast September 7, 2006).
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 two German citizens in Libya on March 10, 1994, one of whom is thought to have been a German counter-intelligence officer. Bin Laden was still wanted by the Libyan government at the time of his death. Osama bin Laden was first indicted by the United States on June 8, 1998, when a grand jury indicted Osama bin Laden on charges of killing five Americans and two Indians in the November 14, 1995 truck bombing of a U.S.-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh.
Bin Laden was charged with "conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States" and prosecutors further charged that bin Laden is the head of the terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, and that he was a major financial backer of Islamic fighters worldwide. Bin Laden denied involvement but praised the attack. 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.
Bin Laden became the 456th person listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, when he was added to the list 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 attacks of 9/11, 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. It wasn't until 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 and providing evidence that Osama bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks. This offer was rejected by President Bush stating that this was no longer negotiable with Bush responding that "there's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."
Activities and whereabouts after the September 11 attacks
Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush stated that he now hoped to "kill or capture" bin Laden. Subsequently, bin Laden retreated further from public contact to avoid capture. Since that time, numerous speculative press reports were issued about his whereabouts or even death. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda continued to release time-sensitive and professionally-verified videos demonstrating bin Laden's continued survival as recently as August 2007. Most recently, U.S. Army General Stanley A. McChrystal had emphasized the continued importance of the capture or killing of bin Laden, thus clearly indicating that the U.S. high command continued to believe that bin Laden was probably still alive. Some of the conflicting reports regarding both his continued whereabouts and previous mistaken claims about his death have included the following:
Many claims as to the location of Osama bin Laden were made in the wake of 9/11, although none were ever definitively proven and some placed bin Laden in different locations during overlapping time periods. After military offensives in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 failed to uncover his whereabouts, Pakistan was regularly identified as his suspected hiding place.
A December 11, 2005, letter from Atiyah Abd al-Rahman to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi indicates 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
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. According to the report, author Rohan Gunaratna states that captured al-Qaeda leaders have confirmed that Chitral is where bin Laden is hiding.
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 said that in January or February (of 2009) he met a trusted contact who had seen bin Laden about 15 to 20 days earlier in Afghanistan. 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 February 2, 2010, 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 would sever ties with extremists and expel Osama bin Laden. This condition was announced as the Afghan president Karzai arrived in the kingdom for an official visit, for a discussion of a possible Saudi role in his plan to reintegrate Taliban militants.
On June 7, 2010, the Kuwaiti Al Siyassa reported that bin Laden was hiding out in the mountainous town of Savzevar, in north eastern Iran. The Australian newspaper online published the claim on June 9.
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 the accusations were designed to put pressure on the Pakistani government ahead of talks aimed at strengthening ties between Pakistan and the United States.
Death
On April 29, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized a raid ("Operation Neptune Spear"with "Geronimo" as the code name for bin Laden himself.) on bin Laden's suspected location near Abbottabad, Pakistan. It was originally believed that bin Laden was hiding near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but he was actually found 100 miles (160 km) away in a $250,000 three-story mansion in Abbottabad at 
34°10′9.63″N 73°14′33.33″E / 34.1693417°N 73.2425917°E / 34.1693417; 73.2425917.Bin Laden's mansion was located 0.8 miles (1.3 km) southwest of the Pakistan Military Academy (Pakistan's "West Point"). Google Earth maps show that the compound was not present in 2001, but was present on images taken in 2005.
On May 1, 2011, in Washington, D.C. (May 2, Pakistan Standard Time), U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed and his body recovered in a U.S. military operation. U.S. officials reported that a team of 24 U.S. Navy SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (SEAL Team Six), under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command and working with the CIA, stormed bin Laden's compound in two helicopters. Three men other than Bin Laden, and a woman, were killed in a firefight in which U.S. forces sustained no casualties. While initial report said that Bin Laden was also killed during the firefight, his daughter said that he was captured alive and then executed. US officials have admitted in the following days that the mission objective was never to capture Bin Laden but to kill him. One of the helicopters experienced mechanical difficulties and made a hard landing and was later destroyed by the SEALs on-site.In his broadcast announcement President Obama said that U.S. forces "took care to avoid civilian casualties." According to U.S. officials, the attack was carried out without the knowledge or consent of Pakistani authorities. During the raid, bin Laden was fatally shot in the head and chest. News of bin Laden's death was announced from the scene with the code phrase "Geronimo E-KIA" (enemy – killed in action).
The entire raid, including intelligence sweeps of the compound, was completed in less than 40 minutes. His body was taken and biometric facial recognition tests were performed. Subsequent genetic testing reportedly supported the preliminary identification. On May 6, 2011, al-Qaeda confirmed that bin Laden was dead. They also vowed that they would continue attacking the United States and its allies.
One of bin Laden's sons was killed in the raid, along with a man named Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (also known as Arshad Khan), who was described as a courier, and his brother. Four years of surveillance of the courier led to the intelligence which made the raid possible. It was reported that the courier was the owner of the compound where the assault took place. The day after the raid, John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief, said that the woman that was killed was one of bin Laden's five wives and was being used as a human shield at the time. However, the next day, White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, said that bin Laden's wife had rushed the invading commandos and was shot in the leg, but was not killed.He also said that the al-Qaeda leader put up resistance, but was unarmed.The only armed resistance was from al-Kuwaiti. He and his wife were killed as the commandos first entered their residence-a guest house on the grounds of the compound. Kuwaiti's brother and Osama bin Laden's adult son, possibly Hamza, were killed in the main house. Bin Laden's twelve-year-old daughter, who was reported to have witnessed her father being shot, was injured by flying debris. The Guardian reported, "she was comforting her father's fifth wife, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, 29, who was shot in the calf by commandos as they closed in on bin Laden."Amal and eight of bin Laden's children were in Pakistani custody following the raid. Major General Athar Abbas told CNN that Amal had told interrogators that she had not left the compound in the five years that she lived there with bin Laden.
Within 24 hours of his death, bin Laden's body was transported to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson for final rites and burial at sea. One U.S. official stated that, "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult." MSNBC reported, "There also was speculation about worry that a grave site could have become a rallying point for militants." His death attracted protests from hundreds of people in the city of Quetta, in southwestern Pakistan, who burned U.S. flags and paid homage to the late al-Qaeda leader.
Following bin Laden's death, the U.S. State Department issued a "worldwide caution" for Americans, and U.S diplomatic facilities everywhere were placed on high alert, a senior U.S official said. Crowds gathered outside the White House, in New York City's Times Square, as well as the World Trade Center, the site of the September 11 Attacks, to celebrate bin Laden's death. Chittral News, a Pakistani news site, claimed that some people were dismayed that Pakistan has lost its sovereignty
