Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia in 1954. He became known as the most pious of the sons among his wealthy father's 54 children. Bin Laden's path to militant Islam began as a teenager in the 1970s when he got caught up in the fundamentalist movement then sweeping Saudi Arabia. He was a voracious reader of Islamic literature and listened to weekly sermons in the holy city of Mecca.
Thin, bearded and over 6 feet tall, bin Laden joined the Afghans' war against invading Soviet troops in the 1980s and gained a reputation as a courageous and resourceful commander. Access to his family's considerable construction fortune certainly helped raise his profile among the mujahedeen fighters.
At the time, bin Laden's interests converged with those of the United States, which backed the "holy war" against Soviet occupation with money and arms.
When bin Laden returned home to Saudi Arabia, he was showered with praise and donations and was in demand as a speaker in mosques and homes. It did not take long for his aims to diverge from those of his former Western supporters.
"When we buy American goods, we are accomplices in the murder of Palestinians," he said in one of the cassettes made of his speeches from those days.
A seminal moment in bin Laden's life came in 1990, when U.S. troops landed on Saudi soil to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
Bin Laden tried to dissuade the government from allowing non-Muslim armies into the land where the Prophet Muhammad gave birth to Islam, but the Saudi leadership turned to the United States to protect its vast oil reserves. When bin Laden continued criticizing Riyadh's close alliance with Washington, he was stripped of Saudi citizenship.
"I saw radical changes in his personality as he changed from a calm, peaceful and gentle man interested in helping Muslims into a person who believed that he would be able to amass and command an army to liberate Kuwait. It revealed his arrogance and his haughtiness," Prince Turki, the former Saudi intelligence chief, said in an interview with Arab News and MBC television in late 2001.
"His behavior at that time left no impression that he would become what he has become," the prince added.
The prince, who said he met bin Laden several times years ago in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, described him as "a gentle, enthusiastic young man of few words who didn't raise his voice while talking."
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, London-based newspaper, spent 10 days with bin Laden in an Afghan cave in 1996. He said bin Laden "touched the root of the grievances of millions in the Arab world" when he presented himself as the alternative to Arab regimes that have been incapable of liberating Arab land from Israeli occupation and restoring pride to their people.
He said bin Laden and his followers never feared death.
"Those guys spoke about death the way young men talk about going to the disco," Atwan said. "They envied those who fell in battle because they died as martyrs in God's cause."
Still, bin Laden had a knack for staying alive.
After being kicked out of Saudi Arabia, bin Laden sought refuge in Sudan. The African country acceded to a U.S. request and offered to turn bin Laden over to Saudi Arabia in 1996, but his native country declined, afraid a trial would destabilize the country.
Back on familiar terrain in Afghanistan – allowed in by the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani – bin Laden and his al-Qaida network prepared for the holy war that turned him into Washington's No. 1 enemy.
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