Nous avons offert un terrain de jeu à Ussama: itinéraire de Bin Laden au Kenya

Most Kenyans first heard the name Osama bin Laden in the days following the 1998 US Embassy bombings.

But the young bin Laden was a frequent visitor to Kenya long before the attacks, having come as a teenager to indulge in big game hunting and horse racing. He may also have visited when he sought refuge in Sudan in the 1990s after he was kicked out of Afghanistan.

This is one of the revelations in The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda’s Road to 9/11 by American journalist Lawrence Wright.

The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for its detailed examination of the events leading up to the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001.

Kenya’s central place in the modern history of terrorism – the bombings in Nairobi were al Qaeda’s first major attack on western targets – is examined, offering surprising bits of information.

Mr Wright interviewed some of bin Laden’s childhood friends who described him as a quiet young man who enjoyed fast driving and cowboy movies.

“He had an adventurous adolescence – mountain climbing in Turkey and big game hunting in Kenya (before sport hunting was banned in 1977). On his family farm south of Jeddah, Osama kept a stable of horses, having as many as 20 at one time, including his favourite, a mare named al-Baqa. He liked to ride and shoot, just like the cowboys on his favourite television shows.”

The book also offers one of the most revealing biographies of bin Laden, tracing his transition from a relaxed and quiet young man to a radical whose sole mission was to wage Jihad against the Americans.

Osama’s father, Mohammed bin Awahd bin Laden, was brought up in the Horn of Africa. He was born in a small town in central Yemen, a country to the North of Somalia.

Mohammed bin Laden’s tribe was driven out of Yemen by a severe drought when he was a teenager. Mohammed moved first to Ethiopia , then to Saudi Arabia, at 21.

That was the country where he would make his name and build a fortune for his family. He caught the eye of the royal family as a hardworking constructor and was given the task of building a ramp for the ageing King Abdul Aziz.

“When Mohammed finished the job (building the ramp, for example), he personally drove the king up the ramp to show it could support his weight. In gratitude, the king awarded him the right to build several new palaces, including the first concrete building in Riyadh.”

Source: Daily Nation