Who Was Osama?

After a decade long manhunt, Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, was killed late Sunday night in an US military operation at his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

54 year old bin Laden emerged from relative obscurity as the most feared face of terrorism after Al Qaeda operatives launched a deadly attack on America that left 3000 dead and hundreds injured.

Osama bin Laden was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list even before he masterminded the 9/11 attacks. In 1998, he had declared war on America in a fatwa that said killing Americans and their allies was a Muslim duty.

Described as thin, beared and over 6 feet tall, bin Laden had been implicated in a series of deadly attacks that grew in intensity and success through the 1990s. His first involvement in a bombing is believed to have been the attack on a hotel in Aden in 1992.

Under bin Laden, Al Qaeda provided financial and military aid to jihadis in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. He helped the Taliban attack the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, which cemented the Al Qaeda-Taliban alliance

Osama bin Laden funded Arab recruits for the Balkan wars through his businesses in Sudan. He is believed to have been given citizenship and a passport by the Bosnian government who denied this after the 9/11 attack.

"I can be eliminated, but not my mission," bin Laden, who eluded capture for years, was famously quoted as saying in an interview with a Pakistani journalist conducted shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan.

On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda operative hijacked and flew commercial aircraft into New York's World Trade Towers, bringing both towers down. The attack on the twin towers and a simultaneous one on the Pentagon left 3000 people dead. After denying responsibility for 9/11, in 2004 bin Laden admitted on tape that he had personally instructed the nineteen hijackers involved in the attack.

Capturing Osama bin Laden has been top of the agenda for American Presidents for 10 years. George W Bush famously said his administration would “smoke him out”. In 2007, US and Afghan forces raided the mountain caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan on receiving intelligence of an Al Qaeda meeting to be held there. Many Al Qaeda and Taliban members were killed, but bin Laden eluded them.

Late Sunday night, President Obama announced that bin Laden had finally been located and killed after a directive from him to the CIA chief that made finding Osama bin Laden top priority on the security agenda. US military forces carried out the operation in secret and bin Laden is said to have personally taken part in the 40 minute gunfight at his Abbottabad residence.

Osama bin Laden's dead body was taken into custody by the US authorities and reports suggest he was given a burial at sea, in accordance with Islamic tradition. US sources claim, unofficially, that it would have been difficult to find a country willing to take the remains of the world's most wanted man.

Osama bin Laden grew up in affluence as the 17th of 52 children of multibillionaire builder Mohammed bin Laden. His father came to Saudi Arabia from Yemen as a child, and ended making a fortune with a contruction business that built 80% of Saudi Arabia's roads. His only son with his Syrian 10th wife was Osama

Osama was the only one of his 52 siblings who never traveled to the West to study, preferring to study civil engineering at Jeddah University. Even at university, Osama's main interest lay in religion

The bin Laden family is estimated to have about 600 members and Osama himself could have anywhere between 12 to 24 children from 4 wives. At least 2 sons from first wife Najwa followed him into his career of terrorism. Pictured on the left, third son Omar who disagreed with his father's philosophy of violence and now lives in secrecy in Qatar. On the right is the most glamorous face of the vast bin Laden family. Wafah Dujour, a model and singer-songwriter, is the daughter of one of Osama bin Laden's half brothers