Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

78 • BIN LADEN, OSAMAof Razmi Ahmad Yousef, who had been staying at a safe house inPakistan owned either by bin Laden or his brother-in-law.In February 1996 and again in February 1998, bin Laden issueda fatwa, that is, an Islamic religious verdict, co-signed by himself;Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of the Jihad Group in Egypt; Abu-Yasir Rifa’i Ahmad Taha, a leader of the Islamic Group in Egypt; andShaykh Mir Hamzeh, secretary of the Jamni’at-ul-Ulema religiousparty of Pakistan, declaring it the religious duty of every individualMuslim to kill Americans everywhere, whether soldiers or civilians,in order to free the holy cities of Islam from the presence of foreign,non-Muslim troops. It should be noted that such religious decrees canonly be legitimately issued by a Muslim religious authority of knownsanctity, probity, and scholarship in Islamic jurisprudence, and binLaden is not recognized as being such a scholar.Among the terrorist attacks that bin Laden is suspected of havingdirected, or otherwise having been involved in, are the following:the World Trade Center bombing of 26 February 1993, as binLaden was the patron and protector of Razmi Ahmad Yousef, whowas indicted for this act on 11 March 1993; the Riyadh bombing of13 November 1995 that destroyed a Saudi National Guard trainingcenter, killing four American military advisers and two Indian governmentadvisers; the Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, SaudiArabia, on 25 June 1996, in which a powerful truck bomb killed 19U.S. service personnel and wounded about 300 others; the massacreof 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians on 17 November 1997at the Temple of Queen Hatsheput outside Luxor, Egypt; the U.S.embassy bombings on 7 August 1998 in Nairobi, Kenya, killing291 people and injuring about 5,000, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,killing 10 people and injuring 77; and the assassination attemptagainst Crown Prince Abdullah of Jordan in June 1993. Bin Ladenis suspected of sponsoring the 12 October 2000 suicide bombing onthe USS Cole at anchor in Aden, Yemen, while his most notoriousoperation was the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World TradeCenter and Pentagon.Bin Laden had close relations with the Taliban, who took overAfghanistan after 1996. Despite reports of estrangement betweenhim and the Taliban, the latter refused to accede to United Nations(UN) demands to hand over bin Laden; upon the expiration of thedeadline to hand him over, attackers believed to be backed by the