Osama bin Laden

Saudi millionaire and powerful leader of an international terrorist network suspected by the U.S. government of staging the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center and attack on the Pentagon. Bin Laden's organization is also accused of orchestrating the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen and the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. responded to the embassy attacks, which killed 226 people, with a largely unsuccessful cruise missile strike on bin Laden's suspected base in Afghanistan, where he has lived since 1994. Bin Laden has also been implicated in several other attacks on American targets, some of which were thwarted.

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