Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. A Salafi jihadist, bin Laden worked to establish a pan-Islamist caliphate by using al-Qaeda to organize and fund jihadist militants and terrorists worldwide. Al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001 directly killed 2,977 victims, and caused the global war on terror.

Bin Laden was raised into Sunni Islam by his wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. He left the country during the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) to help the Afghan mujahideen fight the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. In 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat, which recruited foreigners into the Afghan mujahideen while funding and arming them. In 1988, bin Laden founded al-Qaeda. After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, he commanded a mujahideen force in the 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War. Upon returning to Saudi Arabia, he publicly promoted anti-Western causes and opposed the Saudi royal family, leading to his expulsion from the country by its government in 1991. He went back to Afghanistan, then moved to Sudan later that year.