Osama bin Laden
A
released diary has revealed how the killed leader of the deadly
al-Qaida terror sect made a visit as a teenager to the United Kingdom.
A summer trip to the UK as a teenager and visits to Shakespeare’s birthplace convinced Osama bin Laden that the west was “decadent,”
the late leader of al-Qaida and architect of the 9/11 attacks wrote in
his personal journal shortly before he was killed by US special forces
in 2011.
The journal is among 470,000 documents collected from the house
where Bin Laden died that were released by the CIA on Wednesday. The
agency said it had released the trove “in the interest of transparency and to enhance public understanding of al-Qaida and [bin Laden].”
Though there have been previous reports that Bin Laden travelled to the west, this is the first confirmation.
An entry in the nondescript school notebook describes how Bin Laden
first travelled to “the west” for an unspecified “treatment” when he
was in “sixth grade” and 13 years old.
The following year the teenager, the wealthy son of a billionaire
Saudi construction tycoon, spent 10 weeks in Britain “studying”. Bin
Laden gives no further details, but he has previously been reported to
have taken an English language course at Oxford.
In the journal, Bin Laden briefly describes visiting the home of
William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon but says he was “not
impressed” by British society and culture during his time in the UK.
“I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didn’t allow me to form a complete picture of life there,” he wrote.
“We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeare’s house. I was not impressed
and I saw that they were a society different from ours and that they
were a morally loose society.
The journal was bought in a well-known bookshop in Pakistan a few
hours drive from the garrison town of Abbottabad, where Bin Laden spent
five years with his family before his death.
The journal appears to be partially written by Bin Laden’s son,
Khalid, who was also killed in the Navy Seal raid, and sometimes takes
the form of a question and answer session between father and son.
The journal entries are at times apocalyptic, describing the two
men’s dreams and visions, including a scenario in which Muslim countries
unite after the revolutions and peace is established with the West – a
prelude to the end times in some branches of Islamic theology.
At other times, Bin Laden appears more practical, discussing
recommendations for al-Qaeda’s messaging in the aftermath of the
revolutions to better capitalize on rising Islamist sentiments and to
take advantage of the wave of popular unrest.
Bin Laden’s mention of his feelings towards the west after his time
in Britain will interest experts. Most accounts of his life say he was
radicalised as a student and later when he became engaged as a volunteer
organiser for Arab foreign fighters taking part in the war against the
Soviets in Afghanistan from around 1981.
The US government has released hundreds of documents over recent years, though this is the largest.
The US-based website, The Long War Journal, received some material
in advance and reported that the documents give new details of
al-Qaida’s relationship with Iran.
One 19-page document contains a senior militant’s assessment of the
group’s relationship with Iran, which describes an offer by Iran to
provide some unidentified “Saudi brothers” with “money, arms” and
“training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking
American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf”.
It is not known if the offer was accepted – if it was made at all –
and the inclusion of the document will raise suspicion that one motive
for the release of the new trove was to place material that casts Iran
in a bad light in the public domain.
Mike Pompeo, the Trump-appointed director of the CIA, has a reputation for an aggressively hawkish stance on Iran.
It has been known for some time that scores of senior al-Qaida
officials and their families were held in Iran after fleeing there in
the aftermath of 2011. However the relationship between the detained
militants and their captors was tense, and no solid evidence of active
cooperation on terrorist operations has yet emerged.
Among the material released by the CIA was some which suggested bin
Laden’s time in the UK may have had a deeper influence than he may have
admitted.
Loaded on one computer was video of the Rowan Atkinson comedy Mr
Bean dubbed in Pashto, the local language in western Pakistan and
eastern Afghanistan, and episodes of the animated programme Wallace and
Gromit.
There were also more than 30 videos on crocheting.
***
(Source: Guardian UK)
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