Osama bin Laden was the seventeenth of 57 children of a Saudi construction magnate. He went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to help the fight against the Soviet occupation, raising money and recruits and building the network of Arab volunteers that became al Qaeda in 1988. [1]
After the Soviets left, he fell out with the Saudi royal family over its decision to let US troops into the kingdom for the 1991 Gulf War. He moved to Sudan, where he ran businesses and camps, and lost his Saudi citizenship in 1994. Under American and Saudi pressure Sudan made him leave in 1996, and he flew to Afghanistan, where the Taliban were taking power. [1][2]
Sudan’s defense minister later said his government had offered to hand bin Laden to the United States. The 9/11 Commission “found no credible evidence that this was so”: the American ambassador had instructions only to push Sudan to expel him. [2] The FBI put him on its Ten Most Wanted list after the 1998 embassy bombings, for which he was indicted in New York. [3]
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