Osama bin Laden

Usama bin Ladin أسا‌مة بن لا‌د‌ن
Born	10 March 1957 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Died	2 May 2011 Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Cause of death	Gunshot (alleged)
Nationality	Arab
Political orientation	Anti-communism Wahhabism

Usama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Ladin (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011), also spelled Osama bin Laden, was a CIA-funded jihadist who fought against the Soviet Union and Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Before the September 11 attacks, the Western media praised him for his role in fighting communism.

Name

The United States used the codename Geronimo (the name of an Apache leader who fought against colonizers from 1850 to 1886) to refer to Usama bin Ladin.

Death

Possible pre-2011 death

Before his official assassination, bin Ladin was undergoing dialysis and may have died from kidney failure. In 2009, Boston University professor of international relations Angelo Codevilla argued that bin Ladin was already dead.

In CIA-released videos of bin Ladin from 2007 to 2011, he wrote with his right hand even though he was originally left-handed. He also had a black beard instead of the gray beard he had before, and his nose was inconsistent between videos. Instead of quoting Islamic scripture, he quoted leftist authors such as William Blum and Noam Chomsky.

Operation Neptune Spear

On 1 May 2011, Barack Obama announced that SEAL Team 6 had killed bin Ladin in Abbottabad. U.S. forces identified his body with 90 to 95% accuracy using facial recognition. They also compared the body's DNA by comparing it to his half-sister who died at Massachusetts General Hospital, but a spokesman for the hospital did not confirm the match. U.S. forces then dumped the body into the ocean. Months later, 17 members of SEAL Team 6 died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.