by Adrian Levy
The civilian authorities of Pakistan are throttled and struggle to manage with the political capital they are given, but among those we can name and thank are Syed Kaleem Imam, Tajik Sohail Habib, Ihsan Ghani Khan, Khalid Qureshi, and Tariq Pervez, among many others.
Also in Pakistan, we thank Yemeni student and embassy worker Abdulrahman Alsalehi, who opened many doors and shared his recollections of his friendship with and assistance to the al-Sadehs during the months following Osama bin Laden’s death.
Gaining anyone’s trust in FATA, Pakistan, is always difficult and we thank tribal journalists Rasool Dawar, Fauzee Khan, Tahir Khan, and Gohar Mehsud for helping us. As always, Rahimullah Yusufzai, the doyen of independent Pakistani reporting, generously gave us his time, contacts, and advice in Peshawar. Thanks also to his sons, Taimur and Najeeb, for accompanying us on reporting trips and dealing with countless requests. In Islamabad, journalists Umar Cheema, Azaz Syed, Hamid Mir, Sabookh Syed, the late Syed Saleem Shahzad, Haroon Rashid, and Jon Boone all gave help or listened. Shahzad Akbar of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights provided access to the victims of U.S. drone warfare in Waziristan and an insight into the frightening reality of living in such areas.
Elsewhere, insight into Osama bin Laden and dealing with Al Qaeda’s publicity machine came from Abdel Bari Atwan, Jamal Ismail, and Ahmad Zaidan.
In Mauritania, a huge thank-you to Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed (Abu Hafs al Mauritania) for sharing his memories of living with the Al Qaeda leader and his family. Thanks also to Mauritanian journalists Ahmed Vall Dine and Hamdi Ould Med Elhassen.
In Jordan thanks go out to Marwan Shehadah, Suha Maayeh, and Fuad Hussein for helping us make connections, and to Yousuf Rabbaba, Hasan Abu Haniya, Abu Qatada, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Abdullah Jafar, Hamza Shemali, Huthaifa Azzam, Samira Abdullah, and Salah al-Hami for their recollections of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Al Qaeda.
The list of those who helped us in the United States is long, but those we would like to thank personally for their insight and advice include Robert Grenier, William D. Murray, Zalmay Khalilzad, Ryan Crocker, James Dobbins, Nada Bakos, Cynthia Storer, Richard Barrett, Brad Garrett, Andrew Liepman, Mansoor Ijaz, Husain Haqqani, Ali Soufan, Nelly Lahoud, Bruce Riedel, Jack Cloonan, Stanley Cohen, Larry Siems, Brigadier General (Ret.) Stephen Xenakis, Dan Coleman, Art Keller, Will McCants, Vahid Brown, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Thomas Joscelyn, Joseph Margulies, Professor Mark Denbeaux, Dr. James Mitchell, Hesham and Jody Abu Zubaydah, and Afshon Ostovar. Thank you, Mark Mazzetti, for connections and suggestions. Thank you to David Eckles and Minette Nelson and the Filmmaker Fund for your assistance and guidance with our trips to Mauritania to meet Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed.
Achieving anything in Yemen during the writing of this book was extremely difficult due to the unfolding war, and many who we were able to interview were living in fear and in hiding so do not wish to be named. Those who did help and can be identified include Ahmed Baider; Amal bin Laden’s father, Ahmed Abdul-Fattah al-Sadeh; and Abu Jandal, who has since died. Thanks also to Iona Craig and Peter Salisbury.
In the United Kingdom, we would first like to thank former High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan for generously sharing his memories of crucial times and his family for their hospitality. Thanks to Maya Foa and Clive Stafford Smith at Reprieve, and to the BBC’s Gordon Corera for putting us in touch with “Omar Nasiri,” and thank you to Omar. Thanks to Nigel Inkster, thirty-one years in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and now with the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Major General Roger Lane shared his recollections of British military operations in Afghanistan after Osama disappeared at Tora Bora. Thank you to Hurst publisher Michael Dwyer, the Egyptian cleric Yassir al-Sirri, Abdullah Azzam’s son-in-law Abdullah Anas, and Kemal Alam for sharing his family contacts and Pakistan military connections.
Thank you very much to Alex Strick van Linschoten for offering advice and sharing several unpublished jihad memoirs. Thanks to Declan Walsh for assistance with the family of Aafia Siddiqui.
A huge thanks to our publisher George Gibson in New York, to our managing editor, Laura Phillips, and to Michael Fishwick and Alexandra Pringle and the team in London. George believed that a book like this could be written before we did. Thanks too to Kirsty McLachlan at DGA for her ongoing efforts to introduce our work to a larger audience. And, finally, thank you to David Godwin: ever listening, constantly encouraging, and always hopeful.
Brief Biographies of Major Characters
Ages accurate as of 2017 or at time of death
bin Laden family
Osama bin Laden, 54, founded Al Qaeda in 1988 with Abdullah Azzam and was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs during Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011. Also known as “the father,” “the Sheikh,” and Abu Abdullah (father of Abdullah).
Najwa bin Laden, 57, from Latakia, Syria, first wife and first cousin of Osama. They married in 1974 when she was 16 and she bore him eleven children. She fled Afghanistan two days before 9/11, taking three children with her.
Khairiah bin Laden, 68, from Saudi Arabia, second wife of Osama bin Laden at the time of his death. A child psychologist, she married Osama in 1985 after treating his disabled sons. She bore him one child, Hamzah. After nine years in Iran, Khairiah was reunited with Osama in February 2011. The family believes that the Iranians implanted a tracking device on her body and passed information about her destination to the CIA.
Seham bin Laden, 60, a Saudi-born teacher of Arabic grammar, she was Osama’s third wife at the time of his death, having married him in 1987. Mother of Khalid, Khadija, Miriam, and Sumaiya, she fled Afghanistan for Pakistan after 9/11 and was reunited with Osama in 2004.
Amal bin Laden, 34, from Yemen, fourth wife of Osama at the time of his death. She had five children, four of whom were born in Pakistan. She and her youngest son, Hussein, then aged three, witnessed Osama’s killing and she was shot in the leg.
Saad bin Laden, 30, third son of Osama and Najwa. Born autistic, he nominally led the main family group into exile in Iran in 2002. He escaped in 2008 in an attempt to reconnect with his father. He became lost on the Iran-Pakistan border and was accidentally killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan in July 2009.
Omar bin Laden, 35, fourth son of Osama and Najwa, and once a contender to inherit Al Qaeda. He became disillusioned with his father’s mission and left Afghanistan in 2001. After several years of trying to reestablish his life in Saudi Arabia, he met and married Zaina, a British woman. Although other members of the family accused her of being a spy, Zaina subsequently helped bin Laden family members leave Iran and reestablish their lives in Qatar.
Othman bin Laden, 33, fifth son of Osama and Najwa. He spent nine years in detention in Iran and now lives in Doha with his mother and siblings. He has two Egyptian wives: one is the daughter of Saif al-Adel, the chief of Al Qaeda’s military council, and the other is a niece of Khalid al-Islambouli, who participated in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.
Mohammed bin Laden, 31, sixth son of Osama and Najwa. He married the daughter of his father’s deputy, Abu Hafs al-Masri, in January 2001. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, Mohammed fled with the rest of the family group to Iran, where they remained for nine years. He lives in Doha.
Fatima bin Laden, 29, Osama and Najwa’s oldest daughter. She was married at the age of 13 to one of her father’s Saudi fighters. After he was killed trying to smuggle bin Laden family members into Pakistan in November 2001, she traveled to Iran, where she later married Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, her father’s spokesman, with whom she has two children. In 2013, her husband was captured and extradited to the United States. She lives with other family members near Jeddah.
Khadija bin Laden, 20, Osama and Seham’s oldest daughter. At the age of 13 she married Abu Abdallah al-Hallabi, the brother of Fatima’s first husband. After 9/11, she fled with her husband, who was also known as Daood, to Waziristan and bore him three children. She d
ied in 2007 while giving birth to twins, one of whom died. Daood later sent their surviving children to live with Osama and they were in the house on the night that he died.
Khalid bin Laden, 22, Osama’s only son with Seham. He remained with his father from 9/11 onward, traveling with him to Tora Bora then into hiding in Kunar Province and later to Pakistan, where he acted as his father’s chief assistant. Khalid had made plans to marry and relocate to Waziristan shortly before he was killed alongside his father in May 2011.
Iman bin Laden, 26, Osama’s second daughter with Najwa. After surviving the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, Iman joined the family group in Iran. She escaped in November 2009 and was reunited with her mother. She revealed that the rest of the family was being held against its wishes by the Iranian authorities. She is married to a cousin and lives in Jeddah.
Hamzah bin Laden, 27, Osama’s most stridently religious son. After eight years in Iran, he was released in 2010 in exchange for a kidnapped Iranian diplomat and was briefly reunited with his father in Pakistan. The U.S. government initially believed it had killed Hamzah at Abbottabad but he has reemerged as a new figurehead for Al Qaeda, issuing audio recordings that call for attacks on America, Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Ladin bin Laden, 24, seventh son of Osama and Najwa. He was a young boy when his mother fled shortly before 9/11. After witnessing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he fled to Iran and was detained in Tehran. He now lives in Doha with his mother and siblings.
Miriam bin Laden, 26, second daughter of Osama and Seham. She spent most of her teenage years in hiding in Pakistan. She became surrogate mother to her dead sister Khadija’s children at the age of 18. Along with her younger sister, Sumaiya, who was 19 at the time of the raid that killed their father, she was manhandled by SEAL Team Six and forced to identify her father’s dead body. She lives in Jeddah.
Zaina bin Laden, 61, British wife of Omar. Born Jane Felix Browne, she met Omar during a horse-trekking holiday in Egypt in 2006. They married the following year and were vilified in the press when their relationship became public. Zaina lives with Omar in a compound provided by the Qatari government in Doha, alongside Najwa and many other family members.
Al Qaeda shura members
Abu Hafs al-Masri, real name Mohammed Atef, mid-50s, Osama’s deputy and close friend. A former policeman in Egypt, Abu Hafs helped plan the 9/11 attacks and was killed in a U.S. missile attack in Afghanistan in November 2001.
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, 65, founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and a close associate of Osama bin Laden for more than two decades. After 9/11, Dr. al-Zawahiri fled to Pakistan, leaving his wife and two children to be killed by a U.S. missile strike. Al-Zawahiri took over Al Qaeda after Osama’s death and is believed to be sheltered in Iran.
Saif al-Adel, 56, a former colonel in the Egyptian army. He helped mastermind the attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 and in November 2001 became the head of Al Qaeda’s military council. After sneaking into Iran in 2003, he orchestrated several more attacks, including the bombing of Western housing compounds in Saudi Arabia, and he was able to maintain close links with Al Qaeda Central via the outfit’s Iran “pipeline.” He was released by the Iranian authorities in early 2016 and traveled to Syria. He is married to a daughter of Mustafa Hamid, a former Al Jazeera correspondent, with whom he has five children.
Abu Mohammed al-Masri, 53, aka Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, another Egyptian member of Al Qaeda’s military council. Once a professional soccer player, he, along with Saif al-Adel, was on the original twenty-two-person Most Wanted Terrorists list issued by the FBI. After being released from Iranian detention in March 2015, he traveled to Syria with several former associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, 58, head of Al Qaeda’s political committee before 9/11 and an explosives expert. He was sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt in 1998. Released from Iranian detention in 2015 after more than a decade, he has resumed his Al Qaeda activities in Syria. In July 2016, he issued an audio statement in which he was described as deputy to Dr. al-Zawahiri. He was killed in a missile strike near Idlib in northern Syria in February 2017.
Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed, 49, a religious scholar who served as Osama bin Laden’s spiritual adviser and chairman of Al Qaeda’s sharia (legal) committee for a decade before 9/11. Known as “Abu Hafs the Mauritanian,” he ran the House of the Pomegranates theological school in Kandahar and acted as Osama’s go-between with Mullah Omar. Shortly before 9/11, Mahfouz resigned from Al Qaeda but still arranged for the bin Laden family to seek refuge in Iran. He lived in a military complex in Tehran with them and Al Qaeda’s military committee for almost a decade before escaping in 2011. He lives in Nouakchott, Mauritania, with his wife and six children.
Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, 54, a key associate of Osama bin Laden for almost thirty years. After fleeing into Pakistan in late 2001, he became Al Qaeda’s Number Two and chief of finances and was closely involved in establishing Al Qaeda Central in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. He was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2010.
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, aka Sheikh Mahmud, 41, a Libyan-born member of Al Qaeda who acted as an important go-between with Al Qaeda Central and the military council in Iran before succeeding Sheikh Saeed al-Masri. By the end of 2010, Atiyah had become Osama’s most important deputy. He was killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan in August 2011 along with his entire family.
Other important members of Al Qaeda and supporters
Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, aka Mokhtar, 52, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. KSM, as the CIA dubbed him, first came up with the idea of using passenger jets as flying bombs in the early nineties in collaboration with his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who attacked the World Trade Center in New York in 1993. He tried several times before securing Osama bin Laden’s support for the “Planes Operation,” which was planned without the knowledge or authorization of Al Qaeda’s shura. After 9/11, KSM plotted several more attacks from his hub in Karachi and hosted Osama there on at least one occasion. Arrested in a joint CIA/ISI (Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence) operation in Rawalpindi in March 2003, KSM was rendered to secret CIA detention sites and tortured. He is currently held at Guantánamo Bay, where he is being tried by a military commission.
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, 44, the operational coordinator of 9/11. Later, he served as deputy to Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and plotted several more attacks against Western targets. He was caught during a joint ISI/CIA operation in Karachi in September 2002 and remains in Guantánamo Bay, where he is one of five detainees charged with planning the 9/11 attacks. Since being diagnosed with a delusional disorder, his trial proceedings have been put on hold.
Abu Musab al-Suri, 58, a Syrian jihad theologist who lectured at Al Qaeda training camps during the Soviet war and authored The Call for Global Islamic Resistance while hiding out in Iran in 2003. Married to a Spanish woman, he was accused of playing a crucial role in the Madrid train bombings of 2004 and was captured by the ISI in Quetta in 2005. Handed over to the CIA, he was rendered to Syria, where he is still thought to be detained in Sedanaya prison.
Abu Zubaydah, 45, a Saudi-born Palestinian logistical expert who sent recruits and funds to jihad training camps in Afghanistan from his base in Peshawar. After 9/11, he assisted in the relocation of many Arab fighters and their families to Pakistan. He was captured in Faisalabad in March 2002 in a joint ISI/CIA operation. The CIA accused him of being Al Qaeda’s Number Three, Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant, and one of the planners of 9/11, and he spent several years as a ghost detainee in the CIA’s covert rendition program and was the first to undergo Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Although the United States now admits he is innocent of most of these allegations, he remains at Guantánamo Bay, held without charges and classified as a “forever prisoner.”
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, 51, a Kuwaiti cleric and preacher who was invited to lecture at Mahfouz’s House of
the Pomegranates in June 2001. As he was still there when 9/11 happened, Osama bin Laden asked him to record a video supporting the attacks. Unable to return home to Kuwait, he followed bin Laden’s family and associates into Iran. In 2008, he married Fatima bin Laden. In 2014, a New York court convicted him to life imprisonment for “conspiring to kill Americans.”
Abu Qatada, 52, a Palestinian-Jordanian radical cleric who gained asylum in the United Kingdom during the nineties and was accused of being “Al Qaeda’s man in Europe.” Qatada spent a decade fighting deportation before voluntarily returning to Amman in July 2013. Since then he and his close associate, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, have played a crucial role in negotiating between Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliates and Islamic State.
Abu Jandal, 43, Osama bin Laden’s chief bodyguard prior to 9/11 who carried two special bullets with which to kill bin Laden if ever cornered. In 2000, Jandal played a vital role in bringing Osama’s future wife Amal from Yemen. He was arrested in connection with the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole but after agreeing to enter a Yemeni deradicalization program, he was freed in 2002. He worked as a taxi driver until his death in 2015.
