Osama bin Laden - for ten years this was the face of terror, and even after his death the threat of al-Qaida remains. Photograph: -/AFP
1957 (exact date never confirmed) Born Osama bin Mohammad bin Awad bin Laden in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the seventh son among the extensive family of a wealthy businessman
1970 Father dies
1974 Marries distant relative
1976 Studies economics and management at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah
1979 Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1984 Bin Laden is involved in Peshawar supporting Arab volunteers to fight Soviets. Moves between Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Sudan
1988 Al-Qaida – "the Base" - established in Afghanistan as centre for radical Muslims opposing the US, Israel and its allies
1993 Bin Laden family expels Osama as shareholder in its complex of businesses
1994 Saudi Arabia revokes his citizenship
1995 Saudi Arabia claims Bin Laden links to Riyadh car bombing: six killed including five Americans, 60 injured
1996 Bin Laden leaves Sudan for Afghanistan. Issues fatwa against all US military personnel, faxed to supporters across the world
1998 Truck bomb explosions at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania kill 224 people including 12 Americans. Bin Laden added to FBI's "10 most wanted fugitives" list
2000 Al-Qaida claims responsibility for strike on US destroyer Cole at Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen soldiers killed
2001 11 September Hijacked planes destroy the twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre and target the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000. President George Bush says Bin Laden is wanted "dead or alive"
December US-backed anti-Taliban forces capture Bin Laden's base in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan, but find no trace of the fugitive terrorist 2002 September Al-Jazeera broadcasts a poor-quality tape, claimed to be the voice of Bin Laden, praising the 9/11 hijackers for changing "the course of history"
November Al-Qaida claims responsibility for three suicide car bombs at the Mombasa Paradise resort hotel, killing 15 and wounding 80
2004 October An 18-minute video is sent to al-Jazeera in which Bin Laden accepts responsibility for the first time for the 9/11 attacks, and condemns Bush days before US presidential election. Says his inspiration for 9/11 was seeing Israeli aircraft bomb tower blocks in Lebanon in 1982
2007 September Rumour that Bin Laden is dead is confounded by first new video in three years, warning the US it is vulnerable
2008 May Bin Laden urges Muslims to break the Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza
2010 January Audio tape message from Bin Laden, claiming responsibility for the failed Christmas day attempted bombing of US-bound plane. US president Barack Obama claims al-Qaida weakened by US actions
March Bin Laden claims in a taped message that al-Qaida will kill any American prisoners if the US executes alleged September 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
2011 January Bin Laden says in a taped message that French hostages held in Niger will not be freed unless France pulls troops out of all Muslim lands
1 May Barack Obama announces that Bin Laden has been killed in Pakistan
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