Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [186]
1996: Four Saudi men are arrested for the truck bombing in Riyadh that killed the Americans and Indians. They confess that they were motivated by Osama bin Laden’s militant activities. They are beheaded in Riyadh’s Deira Square, more commonly known as “Chop-Chop Square.”
1996: President Bill Clinton signs a top secret order authorizing the CIA to use any and all means to destroy Osama bin Laden’s organization.
1996: A second truck bomb destroys Khobar Towers in Dhahran, killing nineteen U.S. soldiers. There is never any evidence that Osama and al-Qaeda were responsible, although the U.S. government believe he inspired the attack.
1996: Osama bin Laden signs and issues his “Declaration of Jihad,” which outlines the goals of his network. He calls for the removal of the Saudi government from power; for the liberation of Muslim holy sites from all foreigners; for the support of all Islamic revolutionary groups; and for the U.S. government to be driven out of the Arabian Peninsula.
1996: In September 1996, Osama bin Laden brings his wives, children, and Afghan veterans and their wives and children from Sudan to Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (Important note: Najwa and Omar were unclear as to the exact dates that the family lived in the various locations in Afghanistan, or to the exact timing of Rukhaiya’s birth. Arabs do not celebrate birthdays in the same manner as in the West. They do know that the personal events listed below occurred around late 1996 to mid-1997.)
1996: Osama bin Laden moves his wives and children to Tora Bora Mountain, in Afghanistan.
1997: Osama’s family temporarily moves to Jalalabad. While there, Osama and Najwa have their tenth child, a girl they name Rukhaiya. The child is born in a hospital in Jalalabad.
1997: Osama moves his family to the airport compound in Kandahar, where they live until October 2001. (The family did live for very short periods in other areas in Afghanistan, including Kabul and Jalalabad, during this same period, but their main residence was the airport compound at Kandahar.)
1998: Although Osama bin Laden is not a cleric, he issues a fatwa calling for attacks on Americans. His signed statement calls for the killing of Americans, saying it is the “individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”
1998: On June 8, a U.S. grand jury investigation of Osama bin Laden, which was opened in 1996, finally issues a sealed indictment, charging Osama bin Laden with “conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States.” The United States prosecutors charge that Osama bin Laden is head of a terrorist organization named al-Qaeda, and is also a major financier of Islamic organizations around the world.
1998: A group calling themselves the Egyptian Jihad sends the Americans a warning, saying that they will soon deliver an important message to the Americans, “which we hope they read with care, because we will write it with God’s help, in a language they will understand.”
1998: On August 7, there are simultaneous bombings of the United States embassy in Kenya and the United States embassy in Tanzania. A total of 213 people are killed in Kenya, including twelve Americans. More than 4,500 people are injured. Eleven people are killed in Tanzania, and eighty-five injured. (No Americans are killed in Tanzania.)
1998: U.S. intelligence agencies say that they have intercepted the telephone calls of two of Osama bin Laden’s commanders implicating al-Qaeda in the August 7 embassy attacks.
1998: Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, the group in charge of Afghanistan, turns down a Saudi request to extradite Osama bin Laden.
1998: On August 20, the United States retaliates against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, sending cruise missiles into al-Qaeda training camps. Two hours prior to the attacks, Osama, his sons, and commanders left one of the