NEWSMAKER-Bin Laden on holy war against U.S.
KABUL, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, a multi-millionaire Muslim militant blamed for some of the bloodiest attacks ever to hit the United States, sees them as part of a holy war that God will reward.
U.S. authorities did not rush to accuse anyone of orchestrating Tuesday's simultaneous attacks on commercial and military nerve centres.
But few besides bin Laden are perceived to have the cash or expertise to mount such attacks.
Holed up in the mountains of Afghanistan, the tall, bearded 44-year-old militant leader commands Islamic fundamentalists willing to die attacking the United States which they see as the ultimate enemy.
The United States has put a $5 million reward on his head.
Bin Laden honed his guerrilla warfare skills in the 1980s, commanding Arab fighters funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who fought alongside Afghan Muslim guerrillas against Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan.
His war with the United States is believed to have begun after U.S. forces deployed in Saudi Arabia during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. He saw their presence as desecrating the land of Islam. He is also believed to blame the sufferings of the Palestinian people on the United States's support for Israel.
He has been the target of a massive U.S. manhunt since 1998 when bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people and injured 4,000.
Bin Laden is believed to live amid tight security near the Taliban's spiritual capital in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar or the eastern town of Jalalabad, and Taliban has rebuffed all attempts to deport him.
Born in the Saudi capital Riyadh in 1957, bin Laden was raised in a wealthy family that made its fortune from Saudi Arabia's oil-fuelled construction boom.
His own fortune is reckoned by U.S. officials to be worth about $300 million.
AIDES SPEAK OF ATTACKS
Arab journalists who have interviewed bin Laden and his aides say his men often talk of plans to hit U.S. targets.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newsmagazine, said on Tuesday that bin Laden warned three weeks ago that his followers would carry out an unprecedented and massive attack on U.S. interests for its support of Israel.
Atwan told Reuters that Islamic fundamentalists led by bin Laden were "almost certainly" behind an attack on the World Trade Center.
"Personally we received information that he planned very, very big attacks against American interests. We received several warnings like this. We did not take it so seriously, preferring to see what would happen before reporting it," Atwan said.
Atwan has interviewed bin Laden and maintains close contacts with his followers.
In June, the Arabic satellite television channel MBC said its correspondent spent at least two hours with bin Laden and a large group of his followers, during which his aides spoke of a severe blow against American interests.
Bin Laden smiled but did not make any comment to the threats by his adies, MBC said then.
He has denied responsibility for the 1998 embassy attacks.
The United States retaliated after the embassy bombings by launching missile attacks on what it said were bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan and a chemicals factory in Sudan.
Then U.S. defence secretary William Cohen later admitted the strikes were partly aimed at "going after" bin Laden.
SUSPECTED IN OTHER BOMBINGS
The United States has also branded bin Laden the prime suspect in bombings in the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Khobar in 1995 and 1996 which killed 24 U.S. servicemen. He denies the charges.
Washington also believes that Islamic militants, possibly linked to bin Laden, were behind last year's bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen which killed 17 sailors.
Bin Laden has said that U.S. efforts to arrest him and hurt him financially have had little effect.
"America has been trying ever since (the 1993 attack on U.S. military personnel in Somalia) to tighten its economic blockade against us and to arrest me. It has failed. This blockade does not hurt us much. We expect to be rewarded by God," Time magazine quoted him as saying in an interview two years ago.
"Our job is to instigate and, by the grace of God, we did that, and certain people responded to this instigation," he said.
The Taliban are under sweeping U.N. sanctions because of their refusal to hand over bin Laden. They have said that he was being watched by a Taliban commission to prevent him from using Afghan soil for activities against any other country.
Bin Laden has been stripped of his Saudi citizenship.
13:46 09-11-01 |
