Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11, was “brainwashed” at university by the Muslim Brotherhood, his mother has revealed.
Speaking about her son, the founder of Al Qaeda, publicly for the first time since the aftermath of terror attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, Alia Ghanem said she noticed a change in Bin Laden while studying economics at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the 1970s.
“He was a very good child until he met some people who pretty much brainwashed him in his early 20s. You can call it a cult,” Mrs Ghanem told British newspaper The Guardian from her family home in Jeddah.
“They got money for their cause. I would always tell him to stay away from them, and he would never admit to me what he was doing, because he loved me so much.”
One of the people Mrs Ghanem referred to was Muslim Brotherhood member Abdullah Azzam, who later became his spiritual adviser.
“The people at university changed him,” she told the newspaper. “He became a different man.”
Bin Laden timeline
1957: Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His parents separate and his father dies in a helicopter crash in 1969. He studies in Jeddah, before going to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan, where he forms his own armed brigade
1988: Founds al-Qaeda, meaning "the base"
1989: Returns to Saudi Arabia after Soviets withdraw. He is expelled and he and his followers go to Sudan, then later return to Afghanistan
1993: His family expels him as shareholder in the family businesses, and the Saudi government revokes his citizenship.
1996: Declares war on US forces
1998: Issues a joint fatwa with other Islamists espousing a religious authorisation for indiscriminate killing of Americans and Jews around the world. Deadly attacks in US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are blamed on al-Qaeda. The US authorises air strikes on his compound in Afghanistan. He begins to move around more frequently to stay safe
2000: Seventeen US sailors are killed in an attack on the USS Cole destroyer in a Yemeni port
2001: Four US commercial airliners are hijacked by 19 followers. Two destroy New York's World Trade Centre and a third hits the Pentagon. The fourth crashes in Pennsylvania killing everyone on board. Nearly 3,000 civilians are killed. George W Bush says Bin Laden is "wanted dead or alive" and launches attacks on Afghanistan
2002-2010: Thought to have escaped into Pakistan in late 2001. Footage and recordings of Bin Laden are intermittently released by al-Qaeda throughout the decade as US continues hunting him
2011: US Navy Seals raid his compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad and shoot him dead. Four other people in the compound are also killed. Bin Laden is buried at sea after an Islamic funeral on a US aircraft carrier
Source BBC (Timeline)
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