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The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on 2 August 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the royal family at risk. With Iraqi forces on the Saudi border, Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism was potentially inciting internal dissent. One week after King Fahd agreed to U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney's offer of American military assistance, Bin Laden met with King Fahd and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan bin Abdulaziz, telling them not to depend on non-Muslim assistance from the U.S. and others and offering to help defend Saudi Arabia with his Arab legion. When Sultan asked how Bin Laden would defend the fighters if Saddam used Iraqi chemical and biological weapons against them, he replied, "We will fight him with faith." Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed, and the Saudi monarchy invited the deployment of U.S. forces in Saudi territory.
Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi dependence on the U.S. forces, arguing that it was indignity that the kingdom was being defended by an army of American unbelievers. Bin Laden tried to convince the Saudi ulama to issue a fatwa condemning the American military deployment but senior clerics refused out of fear of repression. Bin Laden's continued criticism of the Saudi monarchy led them to put him under house arrest, under which he remained until he was ultimately forced to leave the country in 1991. The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division landed in the north-eastern Saudi city of Dhahran and was deployed in the desert barely 400 miles from Medina.
Meanwhile, on 8 November 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al-Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed. They discovered copious evidence of terrorist plots, including plans to blow up New York City skyscrapers. This marked the earliest discovery of al-Qaeda terrorist plans outside of Muslim countries. Nosair was eventually convicted in connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and, years later, admitted guilt for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City on 5 November 1990.
Move to Sudan
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In 1991, Bin Laden was expelled from Saudi Arabia by its government after repeatedly criticizing the Saudi alliance with the United States. He and his followers moved first to Afghanistan and then relocated to Sudan by 1992, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed. Bin Laden's personal security detail consisted of bodyguards personally selected by him. Their arsenal included SA-7, Stinger missiles, AK-47s, RPGs, and PK machine guns. Meanwhile, in March–April 1992, Bin Laden tried to play a pacifying role in the escalating civil war in Afghanistan, by urging warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to join the other mujahideen leaders negotiating a coalition government instead of trying to conquer Kabul for himself.
It is believed that the first bombing attack involving Bin Laden was the 29 December 1992, bombing of the Gold Mohur Hotel in Aden in which two people were killed.
In the 1990s, Bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially, and sometimes militarily, in Algeria, Egypt, and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993, Bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government. Their advice was heeded. The war that followed caused the deaths of 150,000 to 200,000 Algerians and ended with the Islamists surrendering to the government.
In Sudan, Bin Laden established a new base for mujahideen operations in Khartoum. He bought a house on Al-Mashtal Street in the affluent Al-Riyadh quarter and a retreat at Soba on the Blue Nile. During his time in Sudan, he heavily invested in the infrastructure, in agriculture and businesses. He was the Sudan agent for the British firm Hunting Surveys, and built roads using the same bulldozers he had employed to construct mountain tracks in Afghanistan. Many of his labourers were the same fighters who had been his comrades in the war against the Soviet Union. He was generous to the poor and popular with the people. He continued to criticize King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In response, in 1994, Fahd stripped Bin Laden of his Saudi citizenship and persuaded his family to cut off his $7 million a year stipend.
By that time, Bin Laden was being linked with EIJ, which made up the core of al-Qaeda. In 1995, the EIJ attempted to assassinate the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The attempt failed, and Sudan expelled the EIJ. After this bombing, al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justification for the killing of innocent people. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander will find a proper reward in death, going to Jannah (paradise) if they were good Muslims and to Jahannam (hell) if they were bad or non-believers. The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.
The U.S. State Department accused Sudan of being a sponsor of international terrorism and Bin Laden of operating terrorist training camps in the Sudanese desert. However, according to Sudan officials, this stance became obsolete as the Islamist political leader Hassan al-Turabi lost influence in their country. The Sudanese wanted to engage with the U.S., but American officials refused to meet with them even after they had expelled Bin Laden. It was not until 2000 that the State Department authorized U.S. intelligence officials to visit Sudan.
The 9/11 Commission Report states:
In late 1995, when Bin Laden was still in Sudan, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin Laden. CIA paramilitary officer Billy Waugh tracked down Bin Ladin in Sudan and prepared an operation to apprehend him, but was denied authorization. US Ambassador Timothy Carney encouraged the Sudanese to pursue this course. The Saudis, however, did not want Bin Laden, giving as their reason their revocation of his citizenship. Sudan's minister of defense, Fatih Erwa, has claimed that Sudan offered to hand Bin Laden over to the United States. The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the Sudanese to expel Bin Laden. Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment outstanding against Bin Laden in any country.
In January 1996, the CIA launched a new unit of its Counterterrorism Center (CTC) called the Bin Laden Issue Station, code-named "Alec Station", to track and to carry out operations against his activities. Bin Laden Issue Station was headed by Michael Scheuer, a veteran of the Islamic Extremism Branch of the CTC. U.S. intelligence monitored Bin Laden in Sudan using operatives to run by daily and to photograph activities at his compound, and using an intelligence safe house and signals intelligence to surveil him and to record his moves.
Return to Afghanistan
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The 9/11 Commission Report states:
In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials from the United States and other governments, asking what actions of theirs might ease foreign pressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered to expel Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. US officials became aware of these secret discussions, certainly by March. Saudi officials apparently wanted Bin Laden expelled from Sudan. They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and would not tolerate his presence in their country. Also Bin Laden may have no longer felt safe in Sudan, where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, and paid for by the CIA.
Due to the increasing pressure on Sudan from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United States, Bin Laden was permitted to leave for a country of his choice. He chose to return to Jalalabad, Afghanistan aboard a chartered flight on 18 May 1996; there he forged a close relationship with Mullah Omar. The expulsion from Sudan significantly weakened Bin Laden and his organization. Some African intelligence sources have argued that the expulsion left Bin Laden without an option other than becoming a full-time radical, and that most of the 300 Afghan Arabs who left with him subsequently became terrorists. Various sources report that he lost between $20 million and $300 million in Sudan; the government seized his construction equipment, and he was forced to liquidate his businesses, land, and even his horses.
1996 Declaration of war and 1998 fatwa
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In August 1996, Bin Laden issued a fatawā titled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places", which was published by Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a London-based newspaper. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Mecca and Medina. The reference to occupation in the fatwā referred to U.S. forces based in Saudi Arabia for the purpose of controlling air space in Iraq, known as Operation Southern Watch. Despite the assurance of President George H. W. Bush to King Fahd in 1990, that all U.S. forces based in Saudi Arabia would be withdrawn once the Iraqi threat had been dealt with, by 1996 the Americans were still there. Bush cited the necessity of dealing with the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime (which Bush had chosen not to destroy). Bin Laden's view was that "the 'evils' of the Middle East arose from America's attempt to take over the region and from its support for Israel. Saudi Arabia had been turned into an American colony".
Fervently attacking American support for Israel and Saudi Arabia as well as its sanctions on Iraq, Bin Laden declared in the fatwa:
"Terrorising you, while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanded duty. It is a legitimate right well known to all humans and other creatures... [our] youths are different from your soldiers. Your problem will be how to convince your troops to fight, while our problem will be how to restrain our youths.. The youths hold you responsible for all of the killings and evictions of the Muslims and the violation of the sanctities, carried out by your Zionist brothers in Lebanon; you openly supplied them with arms and finance. More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanction) imposed on Iraq and its nation. The children of Iraq are our children. You, the USA, together with the Saudi regime are responsible for the shedding of the blood of these innocent children. Due to all of that, what ever treaty you have with our country is now null and void."
On 23 February 1998; Bin Laden, alongside Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ahmad Refai Taha, Shaykh Mir Hamzah and Maulana Fazlur Rahman; issued another fatwā against the U.S., calling upon Muslims to attack the country and its allies. It was entitled "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders". After listing numerous acts of aggression committed by the U.S., such as the presence of American forces in the Arabian Peninsula, sanctions against Iraq, Israeli repression of Palestinians, among other things. The fatwa stated:
"All these American crimes and sins are a clear proclamation of war against God, his Messenger, and the Muslims. Religious scholars throughout Islamic history have agreed that jihad is an individual duty when an enemy attacks Muslim countries. This was related by the Imam ibn Qudama in "The Resource," by Imam al-Kisa'i in "The Marvels," by al-Qurtubi in his exegesis, and by the Sheikh of Islam when he states in his chronicles that "As for fighting to repel an enemy, which is the strongest way to defend freedom and religion, it is agreed that this is a duty. After faith, there is no greater duty than fighting an enemy who is corrupting religion and the world.""
At the public announcement, Bin Laden said that North Americans are "very easy targets". He told the attending journalists, "You will see the results of this in a very short time." It also claimed the "individual duty for every Muslim "was to liberate Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem and the Grand Mosque in Mecca from their grip.
Late 1990s attacks
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In Afghanistan, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda raised money from donors from the days of the Afghan jihad, and from the Pakistani ISI to establish more training camps for mujahideen fighters. Bin Laden effectively took over Ariana Afghan Airlines, which ferried Islamic militants, arms, cash, and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, as well as provided false identifications to members of Bin Laden's terrorist network. The arms smuggler Viktor Bout helped to run the airline, maintaining planes and loading cargo. Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, concluded that Ariana was being used as a terrorist taxi service.
It has been claimed that Bin Laden funded the Luxor massacre of 17 November 1997, which killed 62 civilians, and outraged the Egyptian public. The Swiss Federal Police later determined that bin Laden had financed the operation. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing him to abandon his Najim Jihad compound and move his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.
Another successful attack was carried out in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his alliance with the Taliban by sending several hundred Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.
Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri organized an al-Qaeda congress on 24 June 1998. The 1998 U.S. embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on 7 August 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the U.S. embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. The attacks were linked to local members of the EIJ, and brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the attention of the U.S. public for the first time. Al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility for the bombings.
In retaliation for the embassy bombings, U.S. president Bill Clinton ordered a series of cruise missile strikes on Bin Laden-related targets in Sudan and Afghanistan on 20 August 1998. In December 1998, the CIA reported to Clinton that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the U.S., including the training of personnel to hijack aircraft. On 7 June 1999, the FBI placed Bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list. On October 15, 1999, the United Nations designated al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization through UN Security Council Resolution 1267. This resolution aimed to impose sanctions on individuals and entities associated with al-Qaeda, including freezing assets and imposing travel bans.
In late 2000, Richard Clarke revealed that Islamic militants headed by Bin Laden had planned a triple attack on 3 January 2000, which would have included bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, tourists at Mount Nebo, and a site on the Jordan River, as well as the sinking of the destroyer USS The Sullivans in Yemen, and an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam.
Yugoslav Wars
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A former U.S. State Department official in October 2001 described Bosnia and Herzegovina as a safe haven for terrorists, and asserted that militant elements of the former Sarajevo government were protecting extremists, some with ties to Bin Laden.
According to Middle East intelligence reports, Bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world through his businesses in Sudan. Among them was Karim Said Atmani, who was identified by authorities as the document forger for a group of Algerians accused of plotting the bombings in the United States. He is a former roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the man arrested at the Canada–United States border in mid-December 1999 with a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials. He was convicted of colluding with Bin Laden by a French court.
A Bosnian government search of passport and residency records, conducted at the urging of the United States, revealed other former mujahideen who were linked to the same Algerian group or to other groups of suspected terrorists, and had lived in the area 100 km (60 mi) north of Sarajevo, the capital, in the past few years. Khalil al-Deek was arrested in Jordan in late December 1999 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to blow up tourist sites. A second man with Bosnian citizenship, Hamid Aich, lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity associated with Bin Laden. In its 26 June 1997 report on the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, The New York Times noted that those arrested confessed to serving with Bosnian Muslim forces. Further, the captured men also admitted to ties with Bin Laden.
In 1999, the press reported that Bin Laden and his Tunisian assistant Mehrez Aodouni were granted citizenship and Bosnian passports in 1993 by the government in Sarajevo. The Bosnian government denied this information following the September 11 attacks, but it was later found that Aodouni was arrested in Turkey and that at that time he possessed the Bosnian passport. Following this revelation, a new explanation was given that Bin Laden did not personally collect his Bosnian passport and that officials at the Bosnian embassy in Vienna, which issued the passport, could not have known who he was at the time.
The head of Albania's State Intelligence Service (SHISH), Fatos Klosi, said that Bin Laden was running a terror network in Albania to take part in the Kosovo War under the guise of a humanitarian organization and it was reported to have been started in 1994. Claude Kader, who was a member, testified its existence during his trial. By 1998, four members of EIJ were arrested in Albania and extradited to Egypt. The mujahideen fighters were organized by Islamic leaders in Western Europe allied to him and al-Zawahiri.
During his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević quoted from a purported FBI report that al-Qaeda had a presence in the Balkans and aided the Kosovo Liberation Army. He claimed Bin Laden had used Albania as a launchpad for violence in the region and Europe. He claimed that they had informed Richard Holbrooke that KLA was being aided by al-Qaeda but the US decided to cooperate with the KLA and thus indirectly with Osama despite the U.S. embassy bombings earlier. Milošević had argued that the U.S. aided the terrorists, which culminated in its backing of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.
Criminal charges
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On 16 March 1998, Libya issued the first official Interpol arrest warrant against Bin Laden and three other people. They were charged for killing Silvan Becker, agent of Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in the Terrorism Department, and his wife Vera in Libya on 10 March 1994. Bin Laden was still wanted by the Libyan government at the time of his death. He was first indicted by a grand jury of the U.S. on 8 June 1998, on a charges of conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the U.S. and prosecutors further charged that Bin Laden was the head of the terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, and that he was a major financial backer of Islamic fighters worldwide.
During the Clinton administration, capturing Bin Laden had been an objective of the U.S. government. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, it was revealed that Clinton had signed a directive authorizing the CIA (specifically, their elite Special Activities Division) to apprehend Bin Laden and bring him to the U.S. to stand trial for the 1998 embassy attacks; if taking him alive was deemed impossible, then deadly force was authorized. On 20 August 1998, 66 cruise missiles launched by U.S. Navy ships in the Arabian Sea struck Bin Laden's training camps near Khost in Afghanistan, missing him by a few hours.
On 4 November 1998, Bin Laden was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on charges of Murder of US Nationals Outside the United States, Conspiracy to Murder US Nationals Outside the United States, and Attacks on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death for his alleged role in the 1998 embassy attacks. The evidence against Bin Laden included courtroom testimony by former al-Qaeda members and satellite phone records, from a phone purchased for him by al-Qaeda procurement agent Ziyad Khaleel in the U.S. However, the Taliban ruled not to extradite Bin Laden on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence published in the indictments and that non-Muslim courts lacked standing to try Muslims.
Bin Laden became the 456th person listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, when he was added on 7 June 1999, following his indictment along with others for capital crimes in the 1998 embassy attacks. Attempts at assassination and requests for the extradition of Bin Laden from the Taliban of Afghanistan were met with failure before the bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001. In 1999, US president Bill Clinton convinced the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.
In 1999, the CIA, together with Pakistani military intelligence, had prepared a team of approximately 60 Pakistani commandos to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill Bin Laden, but the plan was aborted by the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état; in 2000, foreign operatives working on behalf of the CIA had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of vehicles in which Bin Laden was traveling through the mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the one in which Bin Laden was riding.