The mastermind of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (although some sources, notably the FBI and Interpol, have listed his place of birth as Jeddah). He was the 17th of more than 50 children to his father, and his mother was his father’s tenth wife. The bin Laden family is very wealthy and has strong ties to the House of Saud, the Royal Family of Arabia – as a boy, Osama attended the same schools as the princes of Saud.
His first known actions as a militant were traveling to Afghanistan in 1979 to take up arms against the invading Russian forces. He would rise through the ranks of jihadis, founding what would become al-Qaeda in 1979, and participating in actions around the world. He was eventually killed in an extrajudicial execution by American forces in 2011.
