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In the Footsteps of bin Laden

Prince Turki al Faisal is the current Saudi ambassador to the United States. In the mid-1980s, he was responsible for funneling Saudi funds to the mujahideen in Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden in Islamabad.

Interviewed in the United States.

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Abdullah Anas studied to be an imam (cleric) before traveling to Pakistan in 1984. With Abdullah Azzam and bin Laden, he helped run the Services Bureau, an organization set up to assist Muslim fighters heading into Afghanistan and to aid Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet Army. He married Abdullah Azzam’s daughter in 1990 and met bin Laden twice in Sudan.

Interviewed in England. 

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Abdel Bari Atwan is the editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, and he interviewed bin Laden in November 1996, three months after bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on America. Osama bin Laden gave him a tour of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and allowed Atwan to take photographs of him in the mountains and of him in his cave.

Interviewed in England.

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Baker Atyani is a former Middle East Broadcasting Co. bureau chief in Pakistan. He was summoned to meet bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in June 2001 near Kandahar, Afghanistan, for an interview, but when he arrived they would not do an on-camera interview. Atyani spent a few hours with bin Laden and al-Zawahair and said the two dropped hints about what would become the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

Interviewed in Pakistan. 

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Hutaifa Azzam, in his first western TV interview, is the son of bin Laden’s first mentor, Abdullah Azzam. He knew bin Laden for many years in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan in the 1980s and lived with bin Laden for a good portion of that time. Additionally, he and bin Laden attended the same “military” training camp and spent time together in battles.

Interviewed in Jordan.

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Khalid Batarfi, in his first western TV interview, was friends with bin Laden as a teenager and a next-door neighbor in a Jeddah neighborhood.

Interviewed in Saudi Arabia.

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Peter Bergen is the author of The Osama bin Laden I Know and was a CNN producer for Osama bin Laden’s first-ever TV interview with Peter Arnett in 1997.

Interviewed in Afghanistan and the United States.

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Gary Berntsen is a CIA commander in Afghanistan who coordinated the fight against the Taliban at Tora Bora and led the CIA investigation of the U.S. embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam in 1998.

Interviewed in the United States.

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Dan Coleman is a former FBI agent who spent some time working in a CIA unit assigned to tracking down bin Laden.

Interviewed in the United States.

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Malika el Aroud, in a rare television interview, is a strong supporter of bin Laden and his cause. She is the widow of an al Qaeda suicide bomber who bin Laden chose for and 'important' mission.

Interviewed in Switzerland.

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Yosri Fouda is Al-Jazeera’s chief investigative reporter and their London bureau chief. He interviewed two 9/11 planners, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh in the spring of 2002.

Interviewed in England.

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Ed Giardet is a British reporter who repeatedly traveled into Afghanistan during the 1980s and covered the siege of Jalalabad in 1989, during which bin Laden threatened to kill him on two different occasions within weeks of each other if he did not leave.

Interviewed in France.

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Peter Jouvenal is a veteran freelance combat cameraman and a photographer for CNN’s 1997 bin Laden interview. He was the first Western cameraman into Kabul, Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban and witnessed the battle at Tora Bora in 2001.

Interviewed in Switzerland.

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Jamal Khalifa was bin Laden’s closest friend at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where he studied biology from 1975 to 1980. He also married bin Laden’s half-sister, Sheikha in 1986.

Interviewed in Saudi Arabia.

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Ismail Khan is a journalist based in Pakistan who attended bin Laden’s 1998 press conference.

Interviewed in Pakistan.

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Jamal Khashoggi is a Saudi journalist who knew bin Laden when he was living in Jeddah and the first journalist from a major Arab media organization to cover mujahideens’ efforts against Soviets when bin Laden invited him to Afghanistan in 1987 after the battle of Jaji.

Interviewed in the United States.

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Scott MacLeod is a TIME magazine reporter who met and interviewed bin Laden in Sudan in 1996.

He’s currently based in Cairo.

Interviewed in Cairo.

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John Miller is a former ABC correspondent who interviewed bin Laden in 1998 in Afghanistan.

Interviewed in the United States.

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Vahid Mojdeh, first ever interview on western TV, is an Afghani who worked in the Services Bureau in Peshawar, Pakistan, during the 1980s where he encountered bin Laden.  He also worked in the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1990s.

Interviewed in Afghanistan.

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Hamid Mir is the founding editor of the Urdu-language Ausaf newspaper in Pakistan and interviewed bin Laden three times, first in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in March 1997, next in May 1998 near Kandahar airport and lastly in November 2001, he conducted the first and only print interview that bin Ladin gave after the 9/11 attacks. bin Laden asked him to be his biographer.

Interviewed in Pakistan.

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Osama Rushdi is a former member of the Egyptian terrorist organization Gama’a al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Group, who was jailed with al-Zawahiri in the early 1980s after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He visited bin Laden’s al Qaeda hospital/guesthouse in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1990.

Interviewed in England.

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Michael Scheuer created the CIA special unit set up to track bin Laden in 1996 and headed the unit throughout the rest of the 1990s. He’s written two books.

Interviewed in the United States.

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Brian Fyfield-Shayler taught English to an 11-year-old bin Laden and his classmates in 1968 at the Al-Thagr school in Jeddah.

Interviewed in England.

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Commander Mohammed Zahir fought on the front lines at Tora Bora in 2001 and met bin Laden on two different occasions when Zahir was a very young boy in Jalalabad.

Interviewed in Afghanistan.

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