| Bin Laden’s Biography: In 1991, Osama bin Laden, settled in Sudan and started a business. He started laying highways in Sudan. Using modern techniques and construction technologies, within a short span, Osama bin Laden laid a 1200 km stretch of very good roads in the desert (a quarter of the total stretch), providing work to tens of thousands of Sudanese and for the first time, connecting villages and towns of the country with the capital, Khartoum and the Port Sudan. Apart from this business, Osama bin Laden diversified into pharmacology and constructed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, the largest in Africa and also a research centre attached to the pharmaceutical factory. Slave-trading was one more sphere of bin Laden's activity in Sudan. For a long time, this trade had flourished in Sudan. But after the National-Islamic Front came to power, it acquired unprecedented scales. Narcotic business: One of Osama bin Laden's major sources of income was the narcotic business. He procured modern equipment and invited specialist chemists. His main narcotic laboratories and warehouses were in the eastern part of Afghanistan, not far away from the Khost Province. Terrorist activities: After the end of the Afghan war, Osama decided to continue a “jihad” against the USA. He sponsored the struggle of Somali militants against the USA army and the United Nations in 1993. Osama bin Laden's name was included in the list of the 10 most wanted terrorists of the world, due to the suspicion about his participation in terrorist acts against American embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), which were carried out on August 7, 1998 and coincided with the eighth anniversary of deploying American troops in Saudi Arabia during the War in the Persian gulf. As a result of the terrorist act in Nairobi, 213 persons were killed and nearly 5000 wounded. According to various reports, 12 or 13 American citizens were amongst the dead. From that day, the US secret services gave Osama bin Laden the status of “Terrorist No.1”, froze his bank accounts and announced an award of five millions dollars for information which would help his arrest. During this period, Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan as a guest of the "Taliban" movement, which was controlling 2/3 of Afghanistan. Using hospitality as a pretext of tradition, the Taliban refused to provide active cooperation to the USA government. The negotiations with the Taliban about extradition led to that the Taliban promised to try Osama bin Laden under Shariya laws or hand him over to a neutral Islamic country but only if the necessary evidence is provided about his participation in terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, officials in Washington stated, not for the press, that if Osama bin Laden was handed-over to American justice, then it would have been extremely difficult to prove the charges against him. He appears more as the mastermind and instigator but not the head of a terrorist network. All those arrested during the investigation of terrorist acts referred only to his calls to fight Americans. Former CIA officials believed that bin Laden – is a myth, carefully fostered by Washington and the extent of his influence and omnipotence is highly exaggerated. Thus, the leader of the CIA operations in the Middle East in the mid 1990's, Frank Anderson asserts in “The New York Times” that, Osama bin Laden actually spends only a small portion of approximately 300 million USD, which according to Washington, was given from family capital and it has virtually dried up. Legend says that he bravely fought the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. However, Anderson is convinced that bin Laden was not a fighter but a kind of philanthropist, conducting much charitable work in Peshawar (Pakistan) among the Afghan refugees. The Deputy Head of the State Department's anti-terrorist activities from 1983 to 1993, Larry Johnson says that "the administration has made bin Laden a certain Muslim Superman - a two meters tall giant, who is present everywhere, knows everything and has lots of money and with whom you cannot fight". A former senior CIA official, who was heading the operations in Afghanistan until his retirement in 1995, Milton Bearden believes that Washington has transformed bin Laden into "public enemy No. 1": “We attribute all the attacks committed in the past decade, based on unconfirmed data, to him”. The Government of the USA rejected the Taliban's offer and preferred military action over accessible diplomatic channels. Approximately after two weeks following the explosions in the embassies, on August 20, the US Air Force conducted air raids on the "Taliban" controlled eastern territories of Afghanistan. The air raids were conducted on presumed terrorist camps in Afghanistan and also on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, where, according to unconfirmed reports, "al-Qaeda" had manufactured chemical weapons. Evidence that the Sudanese factory manufactured something other than medicines, at that point, were weak for conducting attacks. Bombardments by aircrafts and missiles on Afghanistan also did not yield desirable results and as some critics considered, all these actions were planned in advance by the fine political maneuvers of Bill Clinton, undertaken to distract attention of the public from the scandalous case with Monica Lewinsky - the judicial hearing of this case, where Monica gave evidence about a romantic relationship with the President, and took place on the very same day. It is believed that Bill Clinton also actively supported the Islamites, operating in North Caucasus, in Central Asia and other regions of the world. |
FBI got themselves in a big photoshop scandal after the agency published a digitally aged Bin Laden photo, saying it may help find him, as he may look different from years ago. The only problem is - the FBI used an image found on Google of Spanish lawmaker Gasper Llamazares, who was shocked to know they used his photo. Online communities make a joke of the FBI's poor photoshop job coming from the agency that is expected to hire noone but the best.
