Original subtitles

[eerie music]

Man: American 11, ident please or acknowledge.

American 20 will not respond to me now.

[ominous music]

[explosion]

Woman: Oh, my god!

[screams]

Voiceover: 9/11 still haunts us all.

The events of that day

have defined much of the world ever since.

The hunt for Bin Laden drove the West to invade Afghanistan.

Now they've left, a new reign of terror begins.

[shouting]

How much do we really know

about the man Osama Bin Laden?

He may be dead,

but his legacy continues to impact us all.

Obaidullah Baheer: Growing up,

I worshipped everything about Bin Laden.

He was a hero.

Khalid Batarfi: My heart at that time

told me to love him, and I loved him then.

Voiceover: We know Bin Laden as the terrorist,

the world's most evil man.

For those once closest to him,

his story is more complex.

Now some are ready to speak for the first time.

[gunshots]

Aimen Dean: He could say that

you should take that leap of faith.

With will, determination and faith

we can change the course of history.

Voiceover: They tell us about the man they knew,

the choices he made, the points of no return.

People change and war changes people.

That's what happened to Osama.

Aimen Dean: We are going into the path

of endless, perpetual bloodshed.

[explosion]

Woman: Oh, my god!

[sobs]

[suspenseful music]

[sombre music]

Aimen Dean: Bin Laden did not want to be

the commander of all Muslims.

He wanted to claim authority only in a war situation -

a warfare situation.

Al-Qaeda knew what they were doing.

They had a plan,

and they knew what they were doing.

This is why I joined al-Qaeda.

I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia.

At the age of 16

I went to join the jihad in Bosnia.

From there, my journey took me to Afghanistan,

where for the first time I met Osama Bin Laden,

a living example of a Muslim warrior

from the Arabian desert

going to the mountains of Afghanistan.

[shouting]

[explosions]

Voiceover: The Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan

left the door open for the Taliban to seize control,

not dissimilar from today.

Osama Bin Laden was quick to claim the glory

and was elevated to war hero status.

Obaidullah Baheer: I remember as a child

editing Che Guevara's black-and-white picture

and putting Bin Laden's face on it,

because we'd want to wear shirts like that.

That's how hip he was for us.

He'd become the culture.

He became a trendsetter.

Everything that he did was later impersonated

or copied by jihadi groups all over the world.

He became that person

who you didn't need to know too much about,

it was just his image.

Voiceover: Osama returned to Saudi Arabia in triumph.

But within 18 months, Iraq invades Kuwait,

destabilising the whole of the Arabian-Gulf region.

[sombre music]

Aimen Dean: After Saddam Hussein's forces

invaded Kuwait

and it became clear that they were poised

on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border,

to advance further,

the Saudi government decided that the best course of action

is to seek help from the UN Security Council

and to seek help in particular from the United States.

Khalid Batarfi: According to Prince Turki al-Faisal,

who was the head of intelligence in Saudi Arabia,

Osama Bin Laden told him,

"Please don't bring foreign troops,

especially American troops,

because if they come here, they will occupy us.

They will not leave."

The last time I spoke with Osama Bin Laden,

he was telling us,

"Let us train our people to defend Saudi Arabia".

He said, "I'm willing to bring all my mujahideen here

to support you, and that would be enough".

He believes in that.

And he was angry when his country

declined to accept his offer

and chose instead to invite foreign troops,

especially American troops,

to help in liberating Kuwait.

It was like a cat turning into tiger,

an injured tiger.

You didn't expect that.

Voiceover: In a pre-digital age,

Bin Laden began distributing his sermons on audio cassettes,

which sold in their thousands.

[suspenseful music]

Aimen Dean: He viewed the landing

of half a million US troops in Saudi Arabia

as an act of invasion.

They are not there just only to repel Saddam Hussein

and then leave -

he believed that they will stay.

Man reading: "This aggression has reached

such a catastrophic and disastrous point

as to have brought about a calamity

unprecedented in history.

Namely, the invasion by the American and Western

crusader forces of Saudi Arabia."

There was the scaremongering that somehow our whole identity

as Muslims in Arabia

is going to be erased

because we allowed the American forces

to come in such large numbers.

Sending 'invasion forces', he called it,

was an anathema to everything that he believed in.

[call to prayer]

He was talking about jihads even when he was young.

But it was the jihad I understood

and every Muslim understood -

"Let us go and liberate Jerusalem.

Let's fight for the good cause."

Obaidullah Baheer: He went from being this person

that was guided by Saudi policies

to someone who challenged Saudi policies

and said, "No, now you play with my rules."

Bin Laden was the first person to call...

..call the Saudi monarchy out

and call them 'tyrants'.

Aimen Dean: It was an event that shattered all conventions

and turned the politics of the region upside down,

and it created this schism between Osama Bin Laden

and the royal family of Saudi Arabia.

It was a moment where, you know,

that moment shaping the world view

of Osama Bin Laden for years to come,

because he saw the events very differently

from how many other Saudis saw the events.

Khalid Batarfi: That was when the Saudi government

put a stop, or tried to put a stop,

to his ambitions and his speeches

and tried to return him to civilian life,

and to return to his business.

But he wouldn't listen,

and so he split ways with his own government.

Aimen Dean: This is the moment of break-up.

This is the moment where he actually gave up completely

on Saudi Arabia,

decided that he renounces allegiance to the royal family

and that he will become a Pan-Islamic warrior.

[plane engine roars]

Osama Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia never to return.

[gentle music]

Voiceover: Bin Laden moved his family of wives

and numerous children

to a house in the suburbs of Khartoum.

Ali Soufan: He was trying to craft an image

of one of the early Muslim leaders.

He lived a humble life,

but that image, you know, had a reason behind it.

That is basically his narrative.

That's part of his story.

I never thought I will be an FBI agent.

I was 25 years old.

My favourite show was 'The X-Files',

which is about two FBI agents trying to figure out

if there are aliens or not.

And I was, you know, intrigued with the whole possibility.

I worked al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden

from the beginning.

I believe knowing the language,

knowing the culture, knowing the history,

definitely was helpful for me to do my job.

I was intrigued by him.

[suspenseful music]

In Sudan, he had people from the Moroccan jihadis,

he had Libyan fighting groups,

he had Egyptian jihad.

And all of them looked at Osama Bin Laden

as a person who basically had the wealth

to have food on their table.

[suspenseful music]

Man reading: "We came here to co-operate and work

in the areas of road construction and agriculture.

I inherited this type of work from my father.

May God have mercy on him."

Ali Soufan: Osama Bin Laden offered jobs

for a lot of people,

either in his construction company

or in the different farms that he had.

But also, at the same time,

he continued the work of al-Qaeda.

[gunshots]

They started to train people, started to recruit.

So he was... he was establishing

and building upon the network

that he continued to have from the time of Afghanistan.

Voiceover: According to US intelligence analysts,

Bin Laden was financing several training camps

in Sudan and Afghanistan.

[gunfire]

Man reading: "We have to stop the head of the snake.

The snake is America."

[gunfire]

Voiceover: When American peace-keeping troops

were attacked in Somalia,

Bin Laden claimed some of his fellow jihadis

contributed to the fight.

[shouting]

Man reading: "Our people realised more than ever

that the American soldier is a paper tiger,

and after a few blows, runs away.

America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda

and left, dragging their corpses full of shame and defeat."

Ali Soufan: Osama Bin Laden's name

always came up as a financier,

never as a terrorist mastermind.

I think in 1996 that started to change.

He was involved in a lot of the terrorist attacks

that was happening around the Muslim world,

and people don't know about it.

He is very Machiavellian in a way that,

"Yeah, I'm defending Muslims around the world,

but I am willing to kill Muslims

in order to prove a point".

He was a person who truly believed in

his own preaching and his own narrative.

You know, talk the talk and walk the walk.

Voiceover: Other extreme Islamist groups

vehemently opposed Osama Bin Laden's approach.

In 1994, a group of armed men made an attempt on his life.

Voiceover: The Saudi royal family

sent Osama Bin Laden's mother to Sudan

to beg him to cease his jihadi activities

and return to the family business in Saudi Arabia.

He said, "I don't want to be a goat

that is tied to a post

who cannot say anything or go anywhere without permission.

I want to be the free man I am here,

and that would not happen if I go to Saudi Arabia".

A man of this stubbornness,

even with his crying mother appealing to him to come back,

and he refused.

Man reading: "I can sacrifice my life for you,

but right now, what you are talking to me about

is against Islam.

I'm fighting against the enemies of Islam,

and you want me to consider a ceasefire with them."

Voiceover: The American and Saudi governments

eventually demanded his expulsion

from the safety of Sudan.

They kicked him out of Sudan and took all his money,

all his projects, everything -

even his own house.

He became a man who was just angry and hateful

and looking for revenge.

[suspenseful music]

This anger wasn't pure and wasn't Islamic.

It was self-interest.

It was, "You hurt me, and I'm going to hurt you back".

And that changed him.

Now he's not the mujahid who does everything for Allah -

now he's doing things for himself.

And he went down a slippery road

to what eventually he became a terrorist.

Voiceover: When Bin Laden was expelled from Sudan,

he returned to Afghanistan,

where he had founded al-Qaeda eight years earlier.

[gunfire]

[gunfire]

Voiceover: On his arrival in Afghanistan,

Bin Laden was welcomed and housed

by former mujahideen associates.

It was one of them that later allowed him

to use land in Tora Bora,

where he established his infamous al-Qaeda compound.

Aimen Dean: When I arrived to Afghanistan,

the country was in chaos.

It was civil war.

The Taliban were controlling

roughly about maybe 60% of the country.

Once you enter Afghanistan from Pakistan

through the Khyber Pass,

you feel as if you've travelled in time.

You think, "I'm back 100 years"

because there isn't even a phone line, even a landline.

You arrive in a very different era altogether.

The first time I met Osama Bin Laden,

we enter the compound

and we find lots of crates and boxes and suitcases

scattered here and there.

People who looked like as if they just escaped

with their own lives.

When you say 'Osama Bin Laden',

the first image that comes to your mind

is this iconic image of the clean, white turban

and the neat, white robes -

no crease whatsoever.

However, our meeting of him was completely different.

He was wearing, you know,

a robe that was creased,

and the headscarf was not at all ironed.

So he went in to talk about,

"This is where the march towards the liberation of Jerusalem

and also the liberation of Saudi Arabia will start.

This is the victorious vanguard

that the Prophet Muhammed foretold about

will arise from here,

from the mountains of Afghanistan,

and will sweep all the way to the Middle East."

So we were all looking at him thinking,

I mean, "We don't see armies here,

we see a bunch of refugees here in this compound,

and you don't even own this compound -

you're a guest!"

Voiceover: Bin Laden escaped from Sudan with his life

but little else.

He had lost his Saudi citizenship,

his family,

and most importantly, his fortune.

But his conviction that America

was the mortal enemy of Islam was undiminished.

Aimen Dean: There is definitely that quiet charisma about him -

the ability to hold you and hold your attention

for long enough for him to explain

what he wants to do.

And the fact that he's not doing it with shouting style,

or with revolutionary zeal.

He would read your face -

"Look, I know you're sceptical,

I can see it in your faces".

But he already had a trick up his sleeve

that he could use to say

that you should take that leap of faith.

"With will, determination, and faith,

we can change the course of history".

[ominous music]

While his appearance might have given the impression

that he was not in control of anything,

his words and his charisma and determination

really give the impression of a man with a plan.

And five years and one month,

five years and one month from that day,

he and his band of refugees in that compound,

dusty compound in Afghanistan,

changed the course of history.

[gunfire]

Man reading: "First, we obliterate America.

We can destroy America from within

by making it economically weak.

That's what we did with Russia."

- Allahu Akbar! - Allahu Akbar!

Man reading: "We bled the blood from their body in Afghanistan.

Holy warriors brought a huge nation to its knees.

We can do the same thing to America and Israel."

Ali Soufan: Osama Bin Laden believed

that all these dictatorships

and all these regimes that exists in the Muslim world

and across the Arab world

exists because of the United States.

Ali Soufan: The declaration of jihad of 1996,

it is about America stealing the wealth of the Muslim world.

It's about America humiliating Muslims.

It's about, you know, regimes

that works with the United States

to suppress Muslim people and the Muslim population.

[energetic music]

[cheering]

Aimen Dean: Osama Bin Laden talked passionately

about targeting the Americans for what he called

the 'American cultural invasion'

of the Arab and Muslim world.

The effects of American TV stations,

American music, American movies -

he viewed all of this as corrupting influence.

A cultural and religious enemy that needs to be confronted.

Voiceover: As word of Osama Bin Laden's declaration

spread around the world,

journalists began to arrive in Afghanistan to interview him.

Hamid Mir: When I interviewed Osama Bin Laden in 1997,

I was the editor of 'Daily Pakistan'.

From Peshawar, we entered in Afghanistan

through to Tora Bora mountains.

The start of the meeting was not very good

because we were taken to a cave,

and on the entrance of that cave

there were some guards who started searching our bodies.

My cameraman was very uncomfortable.

Then they started touching the hidden parts of your body,

so he protested.

And I joined his protest

because I thought the same will happen with me.

[laughs]

He greeted us a tall man, very soft-spoken, smiling face.

He was speaking English.

It was not only a cave.

There was a library full of books.

There was kitchen, guestroom, washroom -

everything was there.

Voiceover: Hamid Mir was investigating

whether Bin Laden was responsible for the deaths

of more than 20 UN peacekeepers in Somalia

four years earlier.

Hamid Mir: He was trying to speak about his problems

with the Saudi government and the American government,

and I was dragging him back to Somalia again and again.

He was trying to send his message to world,

and I was trying to get my story from him.

Frankly speaking, when I met him first time...

..due to my ignorance,

due to my lack of information about him,

I was not very careful.

But when I came back,

the Egyptian ambassador, he called me.

He was a very good friend of mine.

And he said, "Do you know you met the biggest terrorist

in the world?"

So that was, you see, a big statement for me.

I said, "Mr Ambassador, I just went there,

and I wanted to know why he killed them".

He said, "No, no, he is the head

of a multinational terrorist militia".

Voiceover: In the same month that he met Hamid Mir,

Bin Laden gave his first

international television interview, to CNN.

Mr Bin Laden, you have declared a jihad

against the United States.

Can you tell us why?

Tracy Walder: I was actually working out in a gym,

and I saw this individual on CNN being interviewed,

and his name was Osama Bin Laden.

Through the course of that interview,

when asked about his plans for the US,

he had a smirk, but his eyes lit up

when he was asked about

what his plans were for the United States.

I actually remember that, strangely, very specifically.

And, you know, I guess in hindsight,

looking back, this was clearly a big plan

that he was very excited about.

But his eyes actually spoke to me

more than the smile on his face.

Voiceover: With new recruits arriving all the time,

Bin Laden established a large al-Qaeda training camp

called Tarnak Farms.

Tracy Walder: We knew that

he was using these camps to train terrorists.

There were a lot of propaganda videos

that they had put out there

about these terrorist training camps.

It wasn't necessarily a secret,

the secret more was what was going on in those camps.

You know, what were they being trained for?

Who was in those camps? What were they doing?

And so that was really my job, was to get intelligence

on what was actually going on in the camps.

Voiceover: It was at Tarnak Farms training camp

where Bin Laden met Aimen Dean for the second time.

Aimen Dean: It was between 60 and 80 structures.

It looks like barracks, basically.

Bin Laden's appearance was a far cry

from that appearance a year earlier.

His robes were neat and ironed.

His turban was clean.

I remember in that second meeting,

I joined al-Qaeda

officially to swear the oath of allegiance

to Osama Bin Laden.

The oath of allegiance is a handshake,

and with it you say these words in Arabic.

[speaks Arabic]

You say like that, "I give you my allegiance

to obey you in the good times,

in the bad times.

I fight against those who you fight against

and I make peace with those who you make peace with,

without disobeying God."

And this baya'a, or this allegiance,

is the allegiance of war.

You understand that you are on the path

towards supporting and protecting

our entire Muslim nation.

I mean, I thought I was joining for life.

[suspenseful music]

[gentle music]

In the month of September of 1997,

when I gave my allegiance to al-Qaeda

and I became part of their ranks,

they sent me to a specialist camp

that was for bomb-making

and chemical weapons and poison.

It is a beautiful place to be.

Tobogganing was one of the favourite pastimes

for the jihadis over there.

And that included Osama Bin Laden's kids.

There were four of us being trained.

So we are four, plus the instructor.

He was telling us the reason why there are only four of you

is because the more, you know, students you have,

the more the possibility

there will be an idiot among you.

"Your first mistake is your last mistake."

Chemicals tend to get angry

if you mix them in the wrong order

or in the wrong quantities

or under the wrong conditions,

and then you could blow yourself up.

I started to hear from my fellow trainees

ideas about using these in civilian settings -

cinemas, nightclubs and movie theatres,

as venues for these devices and chemical weapons.

Osama Bin Laden's message was very clear -

to push forward towards, you know,

a full-fledged war against the Americans.

Man reads: "Every tribe on the Peninsula of the Arabs

must struggle on the path of Allah

and cleanse the lands from those occupiers.

God knows that their blood can be spilled with impunity

and their wealth seized

by denigrating them with everything

that will lead them to being chased out, crushed

and defeated from Islamic holy places."

[ominous music]

Focusing on the Americans resonated,

because we're not fighting against any fellow Muslims.

Voiceover: Despite Abu Hafs' reservations,

Osama Bin Laden pushed forward with his plan

and issued new orders to his bomb-makers

in the Tora Bora caves.

We were told that Osama Bin Laden sanctioned

the establishment of a suicide squad within al-Qaeda.

I didn't know that one of them was already a friend of mine

who sat next to me in the first meeting with Osama Bin Laden.

Now, you have to understand

that the use of suicide bombers by jihadis

outside of the Palestinian context

really never happened,

because suicide is suicide.

We understood that

killing oneself is wrong no matter what.

The blanket prohibition on suicide

stood the test of time, like 1,400 years.

Finally, they have crossed the Rubicon here,

and they decided that suicide bombing now

is the way forward

in order to target the Americans,

and especially impregnable American targets

that they wanted to attack.

I think this is where the biggest theological shift

within al-Qaeda really occurred.

I remember we were talking about it

day and night,

and debating and debating and debating the merits,

the theological aspects of it

because it was such a big thing.

Voiceover: Al-Qaeda was changing fast.

Increasingly, Bin Laden aligned himself

with more radical thinkers.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a militant Pakistani Islamist,

came to him with a plan.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

always had this dream

to use planes

to attack the World Trade Center

and other facilities.

Osama Bin Laden listened,

and then he looked at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

and he said, "Why do you want to go to war with an axe

when you can go with a bulldozer?"

And he started changing the plan

to include hijacking planes

that are going from the east coast to the west coast,

because they're going to be full of fuel,

and hit them, you know,

fly them into targeted buildings.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed started to work on developing

the operational elements of this.

[ominous music]

Ali Soufan: He was a true believer,

and he did not care how many people will die

in the process for him

to accomplish his goal and his outcome.

[suspenseful music]

At the time,

it was obvious for people

who are working Osama Bin Laden

that he is planning to do something.

He's escalating his narrative.

Something is coming.

[suspenseful music continues]

Captioned by Ai-Media ai-media.tv