Wealthy Saudi guerrilla leader, born in Riyadh of a Yemeni family. After succeeding in business he moved to Afghanistan, where he supported and supplied the Mujahideen fighting against the Soviet occupation. He then founded al-Qaeda and called for a jihad against the 'Judao-Christian alliance occupying Islamic sacred land in Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula'. In 1991 he moved to the Sudan, from where he was expelled in 1996 for organizing bombing and assassination campaigns. He was accused by the USA of being behind the 1998 bomb attacks on their embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the bombing of the USS Cole warship in the port of Aden, Yemen in 2000. He then conducted terrorist campaigns under the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was named as the chief suspect in the assaults on the World Trade Center, New York, and the Pentagon, Washington, in September 2001, with subsequent events clarifying his role in the event, but his whereabouts became unknown as the US-led attack on the Taliban progressed later that year. Since 2002 occasional tape-recordings purporting to come from him have been made public. Other letters indicating his whereabouts and reports of his death have been released to the media without confirmation.
