Obituary | Osama bin Laden, 1957-2011: The Most Wanted Face of Terrorism

  FREEDOM FIGHTER Osama bin Laden in 1989 with anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan as he was building his terrorism network, with American help.

Osama bin aden, who was killed in Pakistan on Monday, was a son of the Saudi elite whose radical, violent campaign to recreate a seventh-century Muslim empire redefined the threat of terrorism for the 21st century.

Al Qaeda's influence was waning, but will Bin Laden's death embolden a new wave of terrorists?

COMMANDER Directing the mujahedeen in 1989. Some supporters doubted his combat experience.

With the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Bin Laden was elevated to the realm of evil in the American imagination once reserved for dictators like Hitler and Stalin. He was a new national enemy, his face on wanted posters. He gloated on videotapes, taunting the United States and Western civilization.

“Do you want Bin Laden dead?” a reporter asked President George W. Bush six days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I want him — I want justice,” the president answered. “And there’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’?”

It took nearly a decade before that quest finally ended in Pakistan with the death of Bin Laden in a firefight with American forces who attacked a compound where officials said he had been hiding. He was generally believed to be 54.

The manhunt was punctuated in December 2001 by a battle at an Afghan mountain redoubt called Tora Bora, near the border with Pakistan, where Bin Laden and his allies were hiding. Despite days of pounding by American bombers, Bin Laden escaped. For more than nine years afterward, he remained an elusive, shadowy figure frustratingly beyond the grasp of his pursuers and thought to be holed up somewhere in Pakistan and plotting new attacks.

Long before, he had become a hero in much of the Islamic world, as much a myth as a man — what a longtime C.I.A. officer called “the North Star” of global terrorism. He had united disparate militant groups, from Egypt to the Philippines, under the banner of Al Qaeda and his ideal of a borderless brotherhood of radical Islam.

Terrorism before Bin Laden was often state-sponsored, but he was a terrorist who had sponsored a state. From 1996 to 2001 he bought the protection of the Taliban, then the rulers of Afghanistan, and used the time and freedom to make Al Qaeda — which means “the base” in Arabic — into a multinational enterprise for the export of terrorism.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the names Al Qaeda and Bin Laden spread to every corner of the globe. Groups calling themselves Al Qaeda, or acting in the name of its cause, attacked American troops in Iraq, bombed tourist spots in Bali and blew up passenger trains in Spain.

To this day, the precise reach of his power remains unknown: how many members Al Qaeda could truly count on, how many countries its cells had penetrated — and whether, as Bin Laden had boasted, he was seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

He waged holy war with modern methods. He sent fatwas — religious decrees — by fax and declared war on Americans in an e-mail beamed by satellite around the world. Qaeda members kept bomb-making manuals on CDs and communicated through encrypted memos on laptops, leading one American official to declare that Bin Laden possessed better communications technology than the United States. He railed against globalization, even as his agents in Europe and North America took advantage of a globalized world to carry out their attacks, insinuating themselves into the very Western culture he despised.

He styled himself a Muslim ascetic, a billionaire’s son who gave up a life of privilege for the cause. But he was media savvy and acutely image-conscious. Before a CNN crew that interviewed him in 1997 was allowed to leave, his media advisers insisted on editing out unflattering shots. He summoned reporters to a cave in Afghanistan when he needed to get his message out, but like the most controlling of C.E.O.’s he insisted on receiving written questions in advance.

His reedy voice seemed to belie the warrior image he cultivated, a man whose constant companion was a Kalashnikov rifle that he boasted he had taken from a Russian soldier he had killed. The world’s most threatening terrorist, he was also known to submit to dressings down by his mother. While he built his reputation on his combat experience against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, even some of his supporters questioned whether he had actually fought.

And though he claimed to follow the purest form of Islam, many scholars insisted that he was glossing over the faith’s edicts against killing innocents and civilians. Islam draws boundaries on where and why holy war can be waged; Bin Laden declared the entire world as fair territory.

Yet it was the United States, Bin Laden insisted, that was guilty of a double standard.

“It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us and then wants us to agree to all this,” he told CNN in the 1997 interview. “If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists. When Palestinian children throw stones against the Israeli occupation, the U.S. says they are terrorists. Whereas when Israel bombed the United Nations building in Lebanon while it was full of children and women, the U.S. stopped any plan to condemn Israel. At the same time that they condemn any Muslim who calls for his rights, they receive the top official of the Irish Republican Army at the White House as a political leader. Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world.”

The Turning Point

For Bin Laden, as for the United States, the turning point came in 1989, with the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Michael T. Kaufman, a foreign correspondent, reporter and columnist for The Times, died in 2010; Tim Weiner contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 5, 2011

An obituary?on Monday about Osama bin Laden misstated in some copies the chronology in which?Bin Laden’s father was hired to renovate a number of Islamic holy sites. He received the contract to?restore Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1958, not 1969, and he refurbished sites at Medina and Mecca before doing work on Aksa, not afterward. (He died in 1967.)

 

Portland, Ore., Votes to Rejoin Task Force After Terrorism Scare

No, it told Attorney General John Ashcroft in the fall of 2001, its police officers would not join federal efforts to interview thousands of Middle Eastern men. No, it said again in 2005, when it became the first city to stop participating in the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which the Department of Justice operates in cities across the country to unite federal, state and local law enforcement authorities.

And then, on Thanksgiving weekend last year, federal authorities arrested Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali-born teenager they accused of trying to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony attended by thousands of people. The investigation had been under way for many months, but the Portland police were consulted only near the end, largely to help with logistics of a sting operation. Mayor Sam Adams was unaware until after the arrest.

“It showed the challenges we face and the fact that the 2005 resolution, while well intentioned, wasn’t meeting the needs of collaboration between local and federal law enforcement,” Chief Michael Reese of the Portland police said in an interview. “You’re going to be an afterthought, like we were in that investigation.”

Now, after five months of public debate and rewritten drafts — and as Mr. Mohamud’s case moves slowly along — city leaders last week approved what one City Council member called a “very Portland” compromise to rejoin the task force.

“Be it resolved, that it is the policy of the city simultaneously to help prevent and investigate acts of terrorism, protect civil rights and civil liberties under United States and Oregon Law, and promote Portland as an open and inclusive community,” reads part of the preamble to the agreement.

The agreement goes on to emphasize that local officers will be guided by state law “in situations where the statutory or common law of Oregon is more restrictive of law enforcement than comparable federal law.” It also advises individual officers working with the task force to consult with the city attorney “whenever the officer has any question about the application of Oregon law.”

Under Oregon law, law enforcement agencies cannot collect information about a person’s political, religious or social views or group involvement “unless such information directly relates to an investigation of criminal activities, and there are reasonable grounds to suspect the subject of the information is or may be involved in criminal conduct.”

The upshot, Chief Reese said, is that his department will soon be able to participate in longstanding regular briefings that already include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Police, county sheriff’s deputies, port authority officials and others. He will be allowed to apply for top-secret government clearance, and Mayor Adams, who is also the police commissioner, will be able to have secret clearance.

“A month from now, if we’re able to be there at the table and assign officers where it’s appropriate, I would be very happy,” Chief Reese said.

The agreement passed unanimously among the city’s five commissioners, though many residents spoke against it. Some said it would stir more fear among Muslims already wary of federal agents. Some said officers would abuse the agreement.

“How do you spell oppression? J.T.T.F!” a small group of opponents chanted on the sidewalk outside City Hall during the debate, in easy earshot of Council members. “How do you spell police state? J.T.T.F!”

Some critics said the agreement was so nuanced that it was hard to understand. “I don’t know if we are or if we’re not” joining the task force, Brandon Mayfield told Council members.

Mr. Mayfield, a lawyer, has experience in terrorism investigations that go wrong. In 2004, he was arrested after the F.B.I. mistakenly said his fingerprints matched one found on a plastic bag containing detonator caps found at the scene of terrorist bombings in Madrid the same year. He eventually received a $2 million settlement and an apology from the federal government.

Mr. Mayfield said in an interview that he opposed the agreement but that he was pleased that “at least they are thinking of civil rights.”

“They don’t want to be deemed as being soft on security, but at the same time they are putting in all these precautions,” he said. “It shows they are listening to the citizens of this city.”

Much has happened in the decade since Portland first resisted. The mayor and the police chief are new. The lead F.B.I. agent in Portland is new, as is the United States attorney here, Dwight C. Holton. The administration in Washington is also new.

“They were uncomfortable with some of the tactics in the war on terror,” said Mr. Holton. “They were uncomfortable with some of the politics of it, the national politics. Those folks are all gone now.”

Jeffrey L. Rogers, who was the city attorney in 2001 when Portland pushed back against Mr. Ashcroft, was among several people struck by the fact that the American Civil Liberties Union has given cautious support to the new agreement.

“It was harder to look for this kind of middle ground because the positions were so hardened,” Mr. Rogers said, recalling earlier debates. “Just on its face, that’s pretty impressive, to have all of those people agreeing.”

 

German Terrorism Arrests Disrupt Qaeda Inquiry

 

The moment came after they overheard a conversation in which the men exulted about the bombing in Morocco on Thursday that killed 16 people. The suspects had begun building a bomb; one of them complained about the smell as they mixed chemicals in a kitchen. They also mused about where they might kill the most people, officials said. A crowded bus stop, perhaps?

At that point, the investigators reluctantly decided that the danger of an attack outweighed the risk that arresting the men would alert other suspects and hamper the broader investigation. Shortly after sunrise on Friday, they seized two suspects in Düsseldorf, catching one as he walked to his car and another in his apartment, where the suspect briefly brandished a knife before surrendering.

A third man was arrested in Bochum, where he offered no resistance, German officials said on Saturday.

“It was completely clear to me we had to act,” said J?rg Ziercke, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office.

Mr. Ziercke and other officials laid out details of the investigation on Saturday, in a news conference near the federal court where the three men were brought before a judge.

The officials described a vast operation involving an intensive surveillance effort by more than 100 people and including assistance from American intelligence sources and the Moroccan authorities.

The German officials said they believed that the aborted attack was part of a strategy that Al Qaeda had been following to encourage homegrown terrorist attacks, now that the group had lost much of its ability to direct attacks from abroad.

Mr. Ziercke described the plot as a kind of hybrid terrorism that had elements of central control but left would-be attackers largely to their own devices.

One of the suspects, a citizen of Morocco who had lived for a decade in Germany, was recruited to attend a Qaeda training camp last year near the Afghan-Pakistani border, officials said. The suspect, identified only as Abdeladim El-K., 29, received weapons and explosives training and orders from a high-ranking Qaeda official, whom the authorities did not identify, to carry out an attack in Germany.

After re-entering Germany illegally in May 2010, Mr. Ziercke and other officials said, the suspect recruited two longtime acquaintances: men identified as Jamil S., 31, who has joint German and Moroccan citizenship; and Amid C., 19, who is a citizen of Germany and Iran.

While two of the suspects had Moroccan roots, the authorities said they had not found any evidence of a direct connection between the German plot and the bombing in Marrakesh. However, the men did appear to have been inspired by the attack, the police said.

The authorities said all three of the suspects worked full time on preparing for an attack, trying to conceal their activities by communicating in code and acquiring chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide and acetone that can be used in bomb production. They downloaded bomb-making recipes from the Internet and tried to extract chemicals for a detonator from a charcoal lighter.

The suspects also investigated security measures at possible targets like public buildings, airports and train stations, the authorities said. They stayed away from mosques and other places where they might attract attention.

The German officials who spoke on Saturday did not confirm news reports that the suspects planned to stage an attack during the Eurovision Song Contest, an international music competition that will draw large crowds to Düsseldorf from May 10 to 14.

While taking note of the event, officials said the suspects had not yet settled on a target.

“They wanted to create an explosion in a place with big crowds of people,” said Rainer Griesbaum, head of the antiterrorism unit at the federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe.

Mr. Griesbaum and Mr. Ziercke said there was at least one other suspect tied to the plot who had not been arrested, and that there might be dozens of others in Germany providing financial and logistical support to terrorist groups. The officials said they knew of about 200 Germans who had received training at Qaeda camps.

Mr. Griesbaum said Al Qaeda remained determined to retaliate against Germany for sending troops to Afghanistan.

“We have prevented this danger, but only this danger,” Mr. Griesbaum said.

 

World Briefing | Asia: Terrorism Suspect Is Captured in a Raid in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — A man believed to be a senior leader of the terrorist group the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was captured in Afghanistan this week during a joint Afghan and coalition operation in Kunduz Province, NATO officials said Friday.

The raid was the latest in a series conducted by coalition forces against the movement’s leaders in Afghanistan. The group, which is closely tied to Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, has played a role in the revitalized insurgency in northern Afghanistan, where it is believed to be responsible for multiple attacks on Afghan and coalition forces.

NATO does not release the names of captured insurgents. But in a statement, the alliance described the man as the movement’s top leader in Afghanistan. He was taken during a raid on Wednesday along with two associates in the Khanabad district of Kunduz Province. No shots were fired in the operation, NATO said.

Military officials called the man a central conduit between the movement and senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They said he assisted both groups by coordinating suicide and mortar attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout northern Afghanistan and helped coordinate insurgent training in both countries. He escaped from a Pakistani prison in 2010, officials said, and he is believed to have paid bribes to secure the release of other prisoners.

The group is estimated to have 2,500 to 4,000 fighters in Pakistan’s tribal regions and in Afghanistan, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks the conflicts there. In the past two months, coalition forces have killed more than 20 insurgents within the group, including Bilal Konduzi, its top leader in Afghanistan. Mr. Konduzi and another of the movement’s leaders, Shad Mohammad, were killed in an airstrike in Samangan Province on March 10.

News of the capture came as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was meeting with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, during a brief visit to Kabul on Friday. The trip came as tensions between Pakistan and the United States worsened over Pakistan’s demands that Americans end drone strikes in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border, and the American insistence that Pakistan do more to deal with insurgents in the areas. Competing aims for the future of Afghanistan have added to the tensions.

Before arriving in Kabul, Admiral Mullen met with the Pakistani Army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Islamabad. Mr. Karzai had also recently met with a senior Pakistani delegation, including Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who visited Kabul last Saturday.

It is not clear, however, if Admiral Mullen and Mr. Karzai discussed relations among the three countries in any detail on Friday. Waheed Omar, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, said that while both men discussed their recent conversations with Pakistan officials, that was only one of a wide variety of issues touched on in the hourlong meeting.

“There was not a central focus,” Mr. Omar said. “It was really a general discussion about a range of issues.”

Also on Friday, Afghan officials said that NATO helicopters killed four security guards at a road construction site in an airstrike at 4 a.m. in the Sperra district of Khost Province, near the Pakistan border. A NATO spokesman said the helicopters came under attack from armed men and in the exchange of fire, four people were killed. NATO is investigating the episode.

Insurgents killed a coalition soldier in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on Friday. And five Afghan policeman were killed Thursday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Spinbaldak in Kandahar Province. Three police trainees were also killed on Thursday in Nangarhar Province when their vehicle struck a bomb.

And in the eastern province of Paktika, a combined Afghan and American force killed several insurgents after coming under fire in the Yahya Khel district, NATO officials said. Mukhles Afghan, spokesman for the governor of Paktika, said 12 insurgents were killed. The district has been one of the most volatile in the province. No civilians or Afghan or coalition forces were killed in the attack, Mr. Mukhles said.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and an employee of The New York Times from Nangarhar Province.

 

Terrorism Suspect Is Captured in a Raid in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — A man believed to be a senior leader of the terrorist group the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was captured in Afghanistan this week during a joint Afghan and coalition operation in Kunduz Province, NATO officials said Friday.

The raid was the latest in a series conducted by coalition forces against the movement’s leaders in Afghanistan. The group, which is closely tied to Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, has played a role in the revitalized insurgency in northern Afghanistan, where it is believed to be responsible for multiple attacks on Afghan and coalition forces.

NATO does not release the names of captured insurgents. But in a statement, the alliance described the man as the movement’s top leader in Afghanistan. He was taken during a raid on Wednesday along with two associates in the Khanabad district of Kunduz Province. No shots were fired in the operation, NATO said.

Military officials called the man a central conduit between the movement and senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They said he assisted both groups by coordinating suicide and mortar attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout northern Afghanistan and helped coordinate insurgent training in both countries. He escaped from a Pakistani prison in 2010, officials said, and he is believed to have paid bribes to secure the release of other prisoners.

The group is estimated to have 2,500 to 4,000 fighters in Pakistan’s tribal regions and in Afghanistan, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks the conflicts there. In the past two months, coalition forces have killed more than 20 insurgents within the group, including Bilal Konduzi, its top leader in Afghanistan. Mr. Konduzi and another of the movement’s leaders, Shad Mohammad, were killed in an airstrike in Samangan Province on March 10.

News of the capture came as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was meeting with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, during a brief visit to Kabul on Friday. The trip came as tensions between Pakistan and the United States worsened over Pakistan’s demands that Americans end drone strikes in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border, and the American insistence that Pakistan do more to deal with insurgents in the areas. Competing aims for the future of Afghanistan have added to the tensions.

Before arriving in Kabul, Admiral Mullen met with the Pakistani Army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Islamabad. Mr. Karzai had also recently met with a senior Pakistani delegation, including Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who visited Kabul last Saturday.

It is not clear, however, if Admiral Mullen and Mr. Karzai discussed relations among the three countries in any detail on Friday. Waheed Omar, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, said that while both men discussed their recent conversations with Pakistan officials, that was only one of a wide variety of issues touched on in the hourlong meeting.

“There was not a central focus,” Mr. Omar said. “It was really a general discussion about a range of issues.”

Also on Friday, Afghan officials said that NATO helicopters killed four security guards at a road construction site in an airstrike at 4 a.m. in the Sperra district of Khost Province, near the Pakistan border. A NATO spokesman said the helicopters came under attack from armed men and in the exchange of fire, four people were killed. NATO is investigating the episode.

Insurgents killed a coalition soldier in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on Friday. And five Afghan policeman were killed Thursday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Spinbaldak in Kandahar Province. Three police trainees were also killed on Thursday in Nangarhar Province when their vehicle struck a bomb.

And in the eastern province of Paktika, a combined Afghan and American force killed several insurgents after coming under fire in the Yahya Khel district, NATO officials said. Mukhles Afghan, spokesman for the governor of Paktika, said 12 insurgents were killed. The district has been one of the most volatile in the province. No civilians or Afghan or coalition forces were killed in the attack, Mr. Mukhles said.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and an employee of The New York Times from Nangarhar Province.

 

For Threats of Terrorism, Two Words Will Warn

 

The color-coded threat level system endured for nearly 10 years despite widespread criticism, if not mockery, of its sometimes perplexing messages to the public. Now the Department of Homeland Security is phasing out the green-blue-yellow-orange-red palette in favor of a system that officials say will convey more information about the threats.

“Say goodbye to orange,” Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said Wednesday in announcing the replacement system at Grand Central Terminal in New York.

Ms. Napolitano said the new program, called the national terrorism advisory system, would be put into operation Tuesday. “Elevated” alerts will warn of credible terrorism threats; “imminent” will warn of credible, specific and impending terrorism threats.

The alerts will be “based on specific, credible information about potential terrorist activity” and will include “as many details as we can provide in an unclassified form,” Ms. Napolitano said. They will include a concise summary of a potential threat, a description of the area or type of transportation that could be affected, information about steps the authorities are taking to address any threat and suggestions on how people can be prepared and stay informed.

The alerts will be disseminated through announcements to news organizations and social media sites and will appear on a new Web site, www.dhs.gov/alert.

To avoid a series of “cascading alerts” that can confuse the public, Ms. Napolitano said, each alert issued will expire after two weeks, unless intelligence agencies and the homeland security secretary decide otherwise.

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who joined Ms. Napolitano at the news conference Wednesday, said she thought the public had become inured to the color-coded system, “which many people had basically tuned out because it never ended, and you didn’t really know what it meant.”

Ms. Napolitano said that the new system would provide more concrete information to the public and that alerts under the new system would rely on more specific indications of danger.

The color-coded system was established by a presidential directive in March 2002 during the administration of George W. Bush and denoted five threat levels with a range of colors from green (low) to red (severe).

Nearly from the beginning, the system was maligned as being too vague. The fact that alerts were rarely accompanied by any specific explanation led some people to wonder whether they were sometimes used for political purposes.

“It really didn’t make people more aware or less aware,” said Jim Parker, 46, a lawyer from the Upper West Side of Manhattan who was waiting for a train in the Union Square subway station. “It seemed like the government was putting on a show.”

Edward Mackel, 28, a building supplies salesman from Sunnyside, Queens, said he preferred a system that included information about the nature of a potential threat.

“You walk into an airport,” he said. “You see there’s an orange alert and of course you want to know why.”