“Bin Laden always looked up to him,” said terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University. He also became the movement’s public face, putting out a constant stream of video messages while bin Laden largely hid. Then came the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by Islamic Jihad militants. He courted bin Laden, who became a heroic figure for his financial support of the mujahedeen. In 1996, Sudan expelled bin Laden, who took his fighters back to Afghanistan, where they found a safe haven under the radical Taliban regime.

Source: ABC News August 02, 2022 00:41 UTC