Global General

Factbox: 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-02 16:32

Osama bin Laden sits during an interview with Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir (not pictured) in an image supplied by the respected Dawn newspaper, Nov 10, 2001. [Photo/Agencies]

Millionaire father

Born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, one of more than 50 children of millionaire businessman Mohamed bin Laden, he lost his father while still a boy - killed in a plane crash, apparently due to an error by his American pilot.

Osama's first marriage, to a Syrian cousin, came at the age of 17, and he is reported to have at least 23 children from at least five wives. Part of a family that made its fortune in the oil-funded Saudi construction boom, bin Laden was a shy boy and an average student, who took a degree in civil engineering.

He went to Pakistan soon after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and raised funds at home before making his way to the Afghan front lines and developing militant training camps.

According to some accounts, he helped form al-Qaida ("The Base") in the dying days of the Soviet occupation. A book by US writer Steve Coll, "The Bin Ladens", suggested the death in 1988 of his extrovert half-brother Salem - again in a plane crash - was an important factor in Osama's radicalisation.

Bin Laden condemned the presence in Saudi Arabia of US troops sent to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait after the 1990 invasion, and remained convinced that the Muslim world was the victim of international terrorism engineered by America.

He called for a jihad against the United States, which had spent billions of dollars bankrolling the Afghan resistance in which he had fought.