Bin Laden

Re "U.S. kills Bin Laden," May 2 Like most Americans, I am glad that the author of the horrendous 9/11 terrorist attacks is gone. We are correct to celebrate. A mere sigh of relief just would not do it after what this man wrought. We should keep in mind, however, that we still have to convince Osama bin Laden's admirers that there are civilized ways of having one's grievances heard. We must help these people understand that now, as is being proved in the current Arab Spring, that the West's and the rest of the world's perspective on what causes terrorism has matured and is now more informed.

In some of his most expansive comments since his movie touched off a Washington firestorm, the screenwriter of "Zero Dark Thirty" defended his film as depicting torture accurately and said that a pending Senate investigation brought him "a chill. " "We've been accused of defending torture because there are disagreements in some quarters as to exactly which detainee undergoing exactly which form of interrogation first produced the lead that led to [Osama] Bin Laden and thus ... we shouldn't have included it," Mark Boal said.

After landing by helicopter at the Pakistani compound housing Osama bin Laden early Monday, local time, the U.S. special operations team tasked with capturing or killing the Al Qaeda leader found itself in an almost continuous gun battle. For the next 40 minutes, the team cleared the two buildings within the fortified compound in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, trying to reach Bin Laden and his family, who lived on the second and third floors of the largest structure, senior Defense Department and intelligence officials said Monday.

Spanish police arrested an Algerian man allegedly linked to Saudi militant Osama bin Laden. Mohammed Bensakhria was detained in the southeastern city of Alicante along with a suspected terrorist who was not immediately identified, Police Chief Juan Cotino said. Bensakhria had been sought by Interpol and U.S. and French authorities. Spanish Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy said Bensakhria had ties with Bin Laden, who has been accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S.

Osama bin Laden was a Sunni Muslim extremist who considered Iran's Shiite majority faith a blasphemous deviation from the Koran. His ideological fellow travelers killed members of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard in eastern Iran and slaughtered Shiites in Iraq. But his death was a great victory for the United States and the Obama administration. And so, within the cold calculus of Middle East politics and diplomacy, it was a defeat for Tehran. "Because the algebraic sum in the Middle East is zero, whatever is a victory for the U.S. should be assumed as a defeat for the Islamic Republic of Iran," said Maziyar Aqazadeh, the head of the international desk at the daily newspaper Farhikhtegan.

Director Kathryn Bigelow hasn't yet called "action" on her movie about the capture of Osama bin Laden, but the project is already stirring up controversy. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to the CIA and the Defense Department on Tuesday asking for an investigation into whether the White House has granted Bigelow and Sony Pictures access to confidential information for the project. "I'm very concerned that any sensitive information could be disclosed in a movie," King said in a phone interview.

Osama bin Laden has been uncharacteristically silent for nearly a year. He has issued no videotape since October 2004, or audiotape since Dec. 28, 2004, while second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri has issued seven such tapes. Is Bin Laden dead? Current asked five experts. * No "If he had died, it could not be hidden from the grid of Muslim extremist groups in Pakistan." -- Ahmed Rashid, author of "Taliban" and "Jihad" * Perhaps "In one of the very last videos, [he] looked very gaunt.

Osama bin Laden, a scion of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, became the grim apostle of a strain of Islamic radicalism that exalted violence against non-believers, and the leader of a terrorist network that launched repeated attacks in the West, most spectacularly in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. Born in 1957 to a life of privilege, Bin Laden was one of more than 50 offspring of a Saudi construction magnate. He spent his youth in mansions filled with crystal chandeliers, gold statues and Italian tapestries.

Osama bin Laden was wounded in a U.S. bombing raid on Afghanistan in December but is in good health, the editor of a London-based pan-Arab newspaper said Monday. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Al Quds al Arabi, said sources close to the Al Qaeda leader "confirmed to me that the man is in good health." There was no way to verify Atwan's information. U.S. officials say they have no evidence that Bin Laden was wounded but acknowledge it is a possibility.

The builder of Osama bin Laden's last lair was a polite but taciturn man who kept the neighbors at arm's length and prying eyes from discovering the identity of his boss. Known here as Arshad Khan, the stocky Pashtun with glasses and a tuft of hair under his lower lip bought up plots of land on the outskirts of this garrison city. Then, he built a sprawling compound anchored by a three-story building that would serve as sanctuary for the world's most wanted man. The CIA says Bin Laden lived there for five years before he was finally tracked down.