URL. http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/OsamabinLaden.htm Name: Osama bin Laden, also spelled Usama bin Ladin.

His full name was Osama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Laden. ("bin" means "son" in Arabic, so his name also tells his genealogy. Osama was the son of Muhammad, who was the son of Awad, and so forth). Family Background: Bin Laden was born in 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capitol. He was the 17th of over 50 children born to his Yemeni father, Muhammad, a self-created billionaire whose fortune came from building contracting. He died in a helicopter accident when Osama was 11 years old. Osama's Syrian born mother, born Alia Ghanem, married Muhammad when she was twenty-two. She remarried following divorce from Muhammad, and Osama grew up with his mother and stepfather, and their three other children. Childhood: Bin Laden was schooled in the Saudi port city, Jedda. His family's wealth gave him access to the elite Al Thagher Model School, which he attended from 1968-1976. The school combined British style secular education with daily Islamic worship. Bin Laden's introduction to Islam as the basis for political, and potentially violentactivism, was through informal sessions run by the Al Thagher's teachers, as New Yorker writer Steve Coll has reported. Early Adulthood: In the mid-1970s, bin Laden was married to his first cousin (a normal convention among traditional Muslims), a Syrian woman from his mother's family. He later married three other women, as permitted by Islamic law. It has been reported that he has from 12-24 children. He attended King Abd Al Aziz University, where he studied civil engineering, business administration, economics and public administration. He is remembered as enthusiastic about religious debates and activities while there. Key Influences: Bin Laden's first influences were the Al Thagher teachers who offered extra-curricular Islam

lessons. They were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political group begun in Egypt which, at that time, promoted violent means to achieve Islamic governance. Another key influence was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian-born professor at King Abd Al Aziz University, and a founder of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group. After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Azzam solicited bin Laden to raise money and recruit Arabs to help the Muslims repel the Soviets, and he played an instrumental role in the early establishment of al-Qaeda. Later, Ayman Al Zawahiri, the leader of Islamic Jihad in the 1980s, would play a significant part in the development of bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda. Organizational Affiliations: In the early 1980s, bin Laden worked with the mujahideen, guerrillas fighting a self-proclaimed holy war to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. From 1986-1988, he himself fought. In 1988, bin Laden formed Al Qaeda (the Base), a militant transnational network whose original backbone was Arab Mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. Ten years later, bin Laden forged the Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders, a coalition of terrorist groups intending to wage war against Americans and battle their Middle Eastern military presence. Objectives: Bin Laden expressed his ideological goals in both action and words, with his periodically videotaped public statements. After founding Al Qaeda, his objectives were the related goals of eliminating the Western presence in the Islamic/Arab Middle East, which includes battling American ally, Israel, and overthrowing local allies of the Americans (such as the Saudis), and establishing Islamic regimes. *************************************************************************************************************** *********************************

URL.http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/Zawahiri.htm Name: Ayman Al Zawahiri He is also known by a number of other titles and names. These include The Doctor, a reference to Zawahiri's statues, and Teacher (Ustaz in Arabic), a conventional respectful title in Arabic speaking countries.

Family Background: Ayman Al Zawahiriand his twin sister Omnyawere born on June 19, 1951 to an eminent Cairo family. Joining them later were a younger sister, Heba, and two brothers, Mohammad and Husayn. Zawahiri's family was notable for its connection to Al Azhar University, among the most important religious institutions in the Islamic world. Zawahiri's great uncle, Muhammad Al Ahmadi Al Zawahiri, was the chief imam, Ayman's great grandfather and grandfather were also Azhar scholars. His father, Rabie Al Zawahiri, was a professor of pharmacology at Ein Shams university, and his mother, Umayma Azzam, was the daughter of an Egyptian ambassador who became the president of Cairo University. Childhood: Zawahiri was raised in Maadi, a wealthy, upper middle class neighborhood. His family, according to a number of contemporaries interviewed by New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright, was religious, though not zealous, genteel and lived modestly on Ayman's father's income as a teacher. They were marginal members of the wealthy, chic neighborhood whose social life revolved around a local "sporting club." Ayman attended state school rather than the local private school, Victoria college. Early Adulthood: In 1966, Zawahiri helped form an underground cell with the aim of overthrowing an increasingly authoritarian Egyptian government. In 1979 he merged his group with three others to create the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization. Islamic Jihad was the organization responsible for Egyptian Presiden Sadat's assassination in 1980, and with the other members, Zawahiri was rounded up, put on trial and imprisoned for it. In the meantime, he had also received a medical degree from Cairo University. In 1978, he married Azza Nowair, a young woman who had herself become extremely religious, an anomaly in upper class Egypt. In 1980, Zawahiri made his way to Afghanistan, in part to see how the Afghan mujahideen were faring in their holy war to oust their Soviet invaders. There he met Osama bin Laden. Key Influences: Zawahiri grew up in an era in which political Islam was beginning to take hold. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian intellectual who became the most prominent, and most visibly radical, proponent of a strictly Islamic political system in the 1950s. Islamist means someone who believes in a vision of Islam as a political system, a theocracy. Views such as Qutb's that Islam offered a political answer were extremely appealing in many Arab cities in this period, as Arab societies struggled to become independent states in a bipolar world that offered either socialism or Soviet-inspired Marxism, or Western style capitalism. Objectives: Zawahiri's vision is the strictest, most radical and most militant of Islamist visions.. For most of his political life, he focused on the overthrow of the Egyptian government, to pave the way for a theocracy. His association with bin Laden shaped a more global vision.

Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, a Middle East-North Africa Foreign Area Officer for the U.S. military, sums up Zawahiri's ambitions as they were expressed in Zawahiri's 2001 book, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner: Al-Zawahiri dreams of a future jihad in the southern Russian Republics, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan to unite a nuclear Pakistan and the gas-rich Caspian region to serve jihad. Al-Zawahiri identifies the following targets for al-Qaeda and its affiliates: The United Nations Arab rulers Multinational corporations The Internet International News and satellite media International relief organizations, which he believes are covers for spying, proselytizing, attempted coups, and weapons transfers. Zawahiri and Bin Laden Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri have mutually influenced each other. They first met in Afghanistan in the 1970s. In 1985, following his release from prison, Zawahiri went to bin Laden's home, Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and then to Sudan, when bin Laden relocated there in 1992. In 1998, the two men jointly issued a fatwa, or non-binding legal opinion, as the "World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders." Three years later, in 2001, the groups merged, calling the new organization Qaeda Al Jihad. Speculations continue to circulate about how much responsibility, and of what sort,Zawahiri has assumed in the running of Al Qaeda. Notable Attacks Zawahiri is wanted by the U.S. State Department for his reported role in several notable attacks on Americans, including: September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, off the coast of Yemen 1998 attacks on American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya Zawahiri is also known, from an earlier point, for extremely violent bombing attacks on Egyptian targets, despite the cost in innocent bystanders' lives, and for his aggressive employment of suicide bombers. Where He is Now Zawahiri went underground in the immediate aftermath of the American attack on Afghanistan in October 2001. He was last seen in Afghanistan and is believed to be in Northwest Pakistan at present. The United States has made several, if not more, efforts to kill him there. Zawahiri has also taken, apparently, to fulfilling a communications role on behalf of al Qaeda. He has released a number of videos directed at either American or European audiences in the years since 9/11, with specific messages, warnings and analyses of ongoing events.