Osama bin Laden, the man the U.S. government labels the most dangerous backer of international terrorism in the world, is taunting America with new threats of violence from one of his hideaways.
The latest warning of more attacks against American targets came Friday in a telephone call to a London newspaper. The editor who took the call, Abdel-bari Atwan of the Al-Quds al-Arabia newspaper, said he believed the call came from Afghanistan.
Bin Laden could be holed up in any of a number of encampments, guest houses or sanctuaries in the rugged eastern mountains of that country.
Atwan, one of the few journalists who has met bin Laden in one of his mountain redoubts, described the hideaway as a “very, very primitive” cave dwelling, but one outfitted with computers and satellite communications and defended by ground-to-air missiles.
The hideout is at the peak of a 3,000-foot-high mountain near Jalalabad, not far from the Pakistani border, according to Atwan, who interviewed bin Laden in November 1996 at the terrorist leader’s invitation.
Atwan said there were about 20 young men with bin Laden in the cave, men of such varied nationalities as Pakistani, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Jordanian. All were bearded and humbly dressed in traditional baggy Afghan trousers.
“They are very zealous and willing to die for their leader,” he said. “They worship him. I was amazed at the way they look upon him. They are very committed to their cause and to Islam.
“They want to die as martyrs. He himself believes he has lived enough. He told me, `The sooner I die, the better.’ But he wants to die a martyr and believes he will go to heaven.”
In his four-hour interview with Atwan, bin Laden said he was preparing major attacks against American forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. But he has denied he was responsible for previous attacks on U.S. service personnel in Saudi Arabia in which 24 Americans died.
“He is extremely bitter toward Americans,” Atwan said. “He feels he was let down by the Americans because of their foreign policy. He fought for them in Afghanistan but was appalled when they sent troops to Saudi Arabia.
“He is also bitter about Israeli massacres in Lebanon and Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem, and he blames America for that. He does not believe the Americans are genuine when they talk about human rights, and he feels America is exploiting the whole Middle East region, taking the oil, taking the wealth, and is full of hatred toward Arabs and is racist.”
Atwan said bin Laden has been criticized in the Arab world for focusing on such places as Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina and is therefore starting to concentrate more on the Palestinian issue.
Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian national, fought with the American-backed mujahedeen against Soviet domination of Afghanistan in the 1980s, later turned on the Americans and took refuge in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan.
Atwan described bin Laden as tall, bearded, with a few white hairs in his beard, wearing a mustache and having a long face.
“He is very calm, very soft spoken and highly intelligent,” the journalist said. “He knows how to impress people naturally without pretense. He has a very nice smile, and he is really humble. He wears a Mexican blanket on his shoulder for warmth and a white turban.
“You feel he’s genuine, whether you agree with him or not.”
Atwan said he had to be smuggled into Afghanistan, dressed as a Taliban fighter, from the Pakistani city of Peshawar. He said it was a tiring, dangerous, eight-hour journey across minefields at the height of the fighting between the Taliban, the Islamic group that now controls most of Afghanistan, and the mujahedeen.
“We traveled on unpaved roads. The road up the mountain was muddy, and there were rocks falling on the road. All the way up the mountain, I had a mad driver and I had to listen to an Islamic preacher talking about how sinful it is to watch TV,” Atwan said.
“It was minus 22 degrees (Celsius, minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit) on top of the mountain, and I was awakened at 4 a.m. to wash before prayers. There was snow on the mountain, and they told me that sometimes they are snowed in for a month.”
The journalist said he shared the harsh lives led by bin Laden and his followers during his visit to the hideout.
“I slept on a wooden bed that was very primitive, and I was unable to recognize the color of the mattress because it was so dirty. There was a box of grenades by the bed and Katyushas (Soviet-made rockets),” Atwan said.
“The cave is heated with a boiler and pipes inside, but it is very, very primitive. It is defended by anti-aircraft missiles, anti-aircraft guns, Katyushas and rocket-propelled grenades.”
Despite the sparse setting, the renegade Saudi financier-turned-guerrilla fighter is surrounded by modern communications equipment and his cherished religious writings.
“He has three rooms in a cave, and the walls are the stones of the cave,” Atwan said. “One room is like a library, full of Islamic books. There are computers with a database and satellite communications. He is very well informed.”
Atwan said bin Laden is married and has either two or three wives. He said he saw two of bin Laden’s grown sons around him, but in a week at Afghan site, he saw no women, though, he was sure there were some about.
