On social networks you can find a photograph in which, according to the caption, the future terrorist is depicted while studying in the UK. We have verified the authenticity of the photo and accompanying information.
The photo is widely presented in popular public pages on VKontakte, specializing in historical photographs. HistoryPorn Community (1.4 million subscribers) accompanies photograph captioned “Osama bin Laden (right) with friends in Oxford, 1971.” Similar publications can be found in public pages World of History (2 million subscribers), "Moments in History" (1.6 million), "Secrets of History" (1.4 million) and many others. The photo also appeared in Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal and other social networks.
This photograph first became known to the public shortly after the planes were hijacked and attacks to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In October 2001 BBC And The Telegraph reported that the photographs belonged to an unnamed Spanish woman and were published in one of the local newspapers. According to the woman, the photo shows 14-year-old Osama bin Laden along with two brothers and two Spanish girls - the teenagers attended language courses together at Oxford. According to the owner of the photographs, she established the date and time of the shooting from diary entries made at that time.
Nevertheless, for a long time the identification of the young man depicted in the photo on the right remained controversial, because evidence alone was not enough for this. The BBC report said that photographs of a picnic and a boat ride would later be published, which also showed future terrorist No. 1, but we could not find them in the public domain. The owner of the photographs told Spanish journalists that she recognized her friend from childhood thanks to other photographs that had appeared in the press earlier. She probably meant messages about a photograph of the entire extended bin Laden family, taken in Sweden also in the early 1970s. In 2001, Osama bin Laden was identified on it by journalist Hans Lindqvist, who 30 years earlier interviewed the head of the family, a major Saudi businessman. The family went on holiday to the south of Sweden at least twice, and the young men in the two photographs are indeed very similar.
In the spring of 2011, the US military killed bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan. Numerous documents were seized from there, including the terrorist’s diary - their contents presented to the public six years later. These entries may serve as indirect evidence that both photographs of a young bin Laden published in 2001 are genuine, because in the diary the terrorist recalls two trips to Europe that he made as a teenager. The first of them is described very sparsely: at the age of 13, he traveled to the West for treatment (which one and to which country is not specified). The following year he studied in the UK for ten weeks. Although the author does not specify where exactly he was trained, bin Laden is 14 years old turned in 1971, which is when the photographs were said to have been taken in Oxford. He also studied English, and at a very serious level. Teacher at an elite school in Jeddah remembered young Osama as a very modest student who was afraid of making mistakes when speaking a foreign language.
Most likely true
- BBC. Bin Laden's Oxford days
- The New Yorker. Young Osama
- Is it true that the twin towers collapsed not because of the planes that hit, but because of the explosives planted in them?
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