Hamid Mir · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source
Also called: Usama bin Laden, bin Laden
Saudi-born Islamist extremist who founded and led al-Qaeda from 1988 and ordered the September 11 attacks; killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011
In 1988 Osama bin Laden founded the Islamist extremist group al-Qaeda among Arab volunteers fighting the Soviets. In 1996 it moved to Afghanistan and, under Taliban protection, made the United States its target.
After the September 11 attacks the United States attacked and toppled the Taliban regime that had sheltered al-Qaeda in October 2001. The war lasted twenty years; when US forces left in 2021 the Taliban took the country again.
Early on 2 May 2011 US Navy SEALs flown in by helicopter from Afghanistan killed Osama bin Laden in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
43rd President of the United States (2001–2009), who faced the September 11 attacks eight months into office, declared a “war on terror” and launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
44th President of the United States (2009–2017) and the first African American president, who approved the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden
Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the four airliners hijacked on the morning of 11 September 2001 and the fall of the twin towers, the closing of the American sky, twenty years of war in Afghanistan and the death of bin Laden, and the memorial pools in the towers’ footprints