a grain of truth...This is about all that can be said about the connection between Osama bin Laden and Yemen. It seems that Osama bin Laden's father Muhammad bin Laden was of Yemeni descent as the following article from Bloomberg News shows.
This certainly does not make the Yemeni people or government terrorists.
We must be careful not to paint all with the same brush.
P10
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Bloomberg News
09/14 18:49
Bin Laden's Clout in Islamic Crusade Is His Bankroll (Update1)
By Glen Justice and Paul Basken
Washington, Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The strength of Osama bin Laden, named by the U.S. as a suspect in Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington, can be found in his bankroll.
The 43-year-old, Saudi-born advocate of an Islamic crusade against the U.S. inherited about $300 million when his billionaire father died in 1968, according to a U.S. State Department report last year. Many terrorism experts say he has fattened that fortune through investments and by raising funds from like-minded businessmen in countries such as Saudi Arabia.
As a result, bin Laden has been able to draw on that money for years to wage what the U.S. government has described as a terrorist war, moving funds through a network of companies to support the militants who ultimately pull triggers and ignite fuses, U.S. court records show.
``What makes him important is that he is a financier of terrorism,'' said Jim Phillips, a specialist on terrorism at the Heritage Foundation, a policy research group in Washington that backs expanded U.S. military spending. ``It's the best-financed network in history.''
The State Department calls bin Laden's group, known as al- Qaida, or ``The Base,'' an ``umbrella organization'' to carry out acts of terror.
The U.S. put a $5 million price on bin Laden's head and added him to the FBI's list of the 10 most-wanted fugitives after he was indicted in connection with the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in which 224 people died.
War in Afghanistan
Yet he has been able to live without interruption in Afghanistan since 1996, a guest of the Taliban militia that the U.S. doesn't recognize as that nation's government. Neither diplomatic pressure nor the barrage of U.S. cruise missiles launched at his training camps in 1998 has dislodged him.
Bin Laden's involvement in Islamic causes goes back to the U.S.-funded war by Muslim guerrillas against the Soviet army's occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. Abdullah Anas, a former Algerian ally of bin Laden, told the New York Times that bin Laden, while in Afghanistan, came under the influence of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group that helped kill Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
They convinced bin Laden that he should help other Muslims living under autocratic, ``infidel'' governments, Anas said.
Bin Laden was the 17th child born to Muhammad bin Laden, a native of Yemen who helped found Saudi Binladin Group, a family construction business in Saudi Arabia that began in 1931.
The company prospered by feasting on government contracts as the Saudi oil industry expanded, said Kimberly McCloud, a researcher at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
Trial Offers Insights
The company has expanded over the years into power, telecommunications and other construction fields in countries from Yemen to Jordan, said Terry Valenzano, a vice president with the U.S. construction firm Bechtel Group Inc., who has lived in Saudi Arabia for 11 years.
``They are the most sophisticated of all the Saudi contractors,'' Valenzano said. ``They're everywhere you turn.''
Bin Laden no longer has ties to the company, Valenzano said. That assertion was affirmed by Len Cowking, who described himself in a telephone interview as an employee of Saudi Binladin Group's London office.
The federal trial in New York this year of the four men convicted of the embassy bombings in Africa offered a window into how al-Qaida operates.
Satellite Phone
Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, who said he ran bin Laden's payroll and was a founding member of his organization, testified for the prosecution, describing in broken English an operation that was something between a corporation and an organized crime outfit, according to trial transcripts.
He said that bin Laden was the leader, aided by a council of experienced operatives. There were committees overseeing military operations, finances and religion.
On the financial side, a Sudanese company called Wadi al-Aqiq was the parent, the ``mother of other companies,'' as al-Fadl put it. In turn, other businesses were established, including an import-export company, a currency exchange operation, a construction company and an agricultural outfit.
Money was deposited in Sudanese banks, as well as accounts in Hong Kong, Malaysia and London, al-Fadl said. When there were expenses, they were often paid in cash. Al-Fadl -- who made about $300 a month -- described traveling with suitcases that contained $50,000 or more.
He said the companies bought up Sudanese land, purchased sophisticated two-way radio equipment from the government and that bin Laden himself used an $80,000 mobile satellite phone.
Operatives traveled widely under assumed names -- al-Fadl himself had 10 -- and they were often kept in the dark about their destination until they were at the airport, he testified.
Individuals and nations accused by the U.S. of supporting terrorism move money around the globe through banks and brokerages that are unable or unwilling to stop the flow, according to officials in the U.S., Libya and Israel. By using multiple accounts and shell companies, they can hide the origin or destination of the funds and protect them from seizure.
Libya, which is on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, uses ``90 percent of the big European banks'' to manage some of the $7 billion in assets of the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Co., said Mohamed Ali El Huwej, chairman of the state- owned company.
Libya uses a network of portfolio managers outside the country, each working independently to manage a portion of Libya's foreign investments, Huwej said earlier this month in an interview in Tripoli.
Bin Laden's Rise
The rise of bin Laden's organization began with the U.S.- supported Islamic jihad, or holy war, against the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1979. Bin Laden was among the first young Islamic men who rushed in to fight, al-Fadl said in court testimony. The war attracted as many as 30,000 men from about 50 countries.
What bin Laden wound up doing was raising funds and recruiting for the war from Peshawar, a Pakistani city on the border with Afghanistan, al-Fadl testified. There he used the family company to aid construction projects and set up the ``Maktab al-Khidamat,'' or Services Office, in the mid-1980s, which helped the young militants get travel papers and citizenship documents, he told the court.
In 1988, shortly before the Soviets pulled out, bin Laden established his current group, al-Qaida, by tapping fighters in his camps, al-Fadl said.
Leaving Saudi Arabia
Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He went to Sudan, was forced out under U.S. diplomatic pressure, and went back to Afghanistan in 1996, where the Taliban took power later in the year and gave him protection.
For the U.S. public, bin Laden is fast becoming the face of terrorism, even if his is a face few have seen beyond stock television footage and newspaper file photos.
The bearded, 160-pound fugitive, whose slim frame stands about 6 feet 4 inches, walks with the aid of a cane and travels under aliases including ``The Prince,'' ``The Emir,'' ``The Director,'' and ``The Hajj,'' according to the FBI.
Bin Laden seems to communicate with the world through a collection of journalists and intermediaries. Rarely, he submits to questions from international news organizations, such as a 1997 interview with CNN.
As he has articulated in some of these interviews, bin Laden's thrust is to halt U.S. involvement in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia.
``We declared jihad because the U.S. government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical,'' he told CNN.
Saudi Arabia is the spiritual center of Islam, the homeland of the prophet Mohammed and the site of the holy city Mecca, toward which devout Muslims turn in prayer five times each day.
The U.S. has about 25,000 troops in and around the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, including Saudi Arabia, said Navy Commander Rex Totty, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. Totty declined to give a specific number for Saudi Arabia, although a Pentagon tally was 7,000 a year ago.
``By being loyal to the U.S. regime, the Saudi regime has committed an act against Islam,'' bin Laden told CNN.