本．拉登的人生轨迹

美国时间5月1日晚，美国总统巴拉克·奥巴马发表电视讲话，正式公布了基地组织头目本·拉登的死讯。这位时代枭雄也如流星般陨落，现在让我们一起，看看这位恐怖组织头目的人生轨迹。

Osama bin Laden was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1957, to Saudi Arabia's second richest family which dominated housing and civil engineering in the country.

Educated in Jeddah as a civil engineer, he was a giant in the construction sector in his own right, owning an estimated fortune of $400 million U.S. dollars.

Bin Laden worked for his father's company and joined the US-backed Jihad, or "Holy War," against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, where he founded the "al-Qaeda" military base camp and training center in 1988.

He moved back to Saudi Arabia after Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, but when Saudi Arabia allowed U.S. troops in to attack Iraq in the Gulf War, he left for Yemen in disappointment.

Bin Laden was stripped of Saudi citizenship for allegedly channeling fund for terrorism activities in 1994, and has since lived in Afghanistan.

Pulling together several Islamic extremist organizations from different countries and regions, he turned the al-Qaida network into a nucleus, campaigning to drive Americans and Israelis out of Arab territories.

The United States stormed his al-Qaida network and its Taliban host in Afghanistan after locking bin Laden as the prime suspect for the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, which killed over 3000 people.

He was seen as face of global terrorism since then.

Al-Qaida is not thought to have provided logistical or financial support to the group of North African Muslims who pulled off the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid, Spain - which killed 191 people - but they were certainly inspired by its dream of worldwide jihad. Likewise, no link has been established between al-Qaida's leadership and the four British Muslim suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London on July 7, 2005, but few believe the attack would have taken place, had bin Laden not aroused the passions of young Muslim radicals the world over.

Though video tapes of bin Laden had been repeatedly broadcasted on air, for many years the whereabouts of the world's most notorious man remained unknown. Despite the military might of the US, tracking down bin Laden proved impossible, until now.

For CRI. This is He Fei.