Osama bin Laden

Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.[7][8][9] From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror.
After being put on the FBI's Most Wanted list, bin Laden managed to remain in hiding during three U.S. presidential administrations. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a secured private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs in a covert operation ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama. Shortly after his death, bin Laden's body was buried at sea. Al-Qaeda acknowledged his death on May 6, 2011, concurrently vowing to retaliate.[10]
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source described him as "hard working",[20]; another said he left university during his third year without completing a college degree.[21] At university, bin Laden's main interest was religion, where he was involved in both "interpreting the Quran and jihad" and charitable work.[22] Other interests included writing poetry;[23] 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..[24]
In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia;[25] they were divorced before September 11, 2001. Bin Laden's other known wives were: Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s), Khairiah Sabar (married 1985), Siham Sabar (married 1987), and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). Some sources also list a sixth wife, name unknown, whose marriage to bin Laden was annulled soon after the ceremony.[26] Bin Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children with his wives.[27][28] Many of bin Laden's children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and as of 2010 Iranian authorities reportedly continue to control their movement.[29]
Bin Laden's father Mohammed died in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot misjudged a landing.[30] Bin Laden'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 bin Laden 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.[31] Bin Laden 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.[32] Bin Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered in demeanor.[33]
Beliefs and ideology
Main article: Beliefs and ideology of Osama bin Laden
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,[34] condensed in the phrase "They hate us for what we do, not who we are."
Bin Laden also said 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.[35] This belief, in conjunction with violent jihad, has sometimes been called Qutbism after being promoted by Sayyid Qutb.[36] Bin Laden believed that Afghanistan, under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban, was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world.[37] 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,[38] 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.[39]
Bin Laden's ideology included the idea that civilians, including women and children, are legitimate targets of jihad.[40][41] 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."[42] 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.[43]
Bin Laden opposed music on religious grounds,[44] 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.[45]
His viewpoints and methods of achieving them had led to him being designated as a terrorist by scholars,[46][47] journalists from The New York Times,[48][49] the BBC,[50] and Qatari news station Al Jazeera,[51] analysts such as Peter Bergen,[52] Michael Scheuer,[53] Marc Sageman,[54] and Bruce Hoffman[55][56] and he was indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in Madrid, New York City, and Tripoli