style="font-weight: normal; font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Osama Bin Laden is both one of the CIA's most wanted men and a hero to many young people in the Arab world.$0He and his associates were already being sought by the US on charges of international terrorism, including in connection with the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Africa and last year's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.$0$0$0In May this year a US jury convicted four men believed to be linked with Bin Laden of plotting the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.$0$0Bin Laden, an immensely wealthy and private man, has been granted a safe haven by Afghanistan's ruling Taleban movement.$0$0During his time in hiding, he has called for a holy war against the US, and for the killing of Americans and Jews. He is reported to be able to rally around him up to 3,000 fighters.$0$0He is also suspected of helping to set up Islamic training centres to prepare soldiers to fight in Chechnya and other parts of the former Soviet Union.$0$0Sponsored by US and Pakistan$0$0His power is founded on a personal fortune earned by his family's construction business in Saudi Arabia.$0$0$0$0Born in Saudi Arabia to a Yemeni family, Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.$0$0The Afghan jihad was backed with American dollars and had the blessing of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.$0$0He received security training from the CIA itself, according to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian.$0$0While in Afghanistan, he founded the Maktab al-Khidimat (MAK), which recruited fighters from around the world and imported equipment to aid the Afghan resistance against the Soviet army.$0$0Turned against the US$0$0$0After the Soviet withdrawal, the "Arab Afghans", as Bin Laden's faction came to be called, turned their fire against the US and its allies in the Middle East.$0$0Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family construction business, but was expelled in 1991 because of his anti-government activities there.$0$0He spent the next five years in Sudan until US pressure prompted the Sudanese Government to expel him, whereupon Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan.$0$0Terrorism experts say Bin Laden has been using his millions to fund attacks against the US.$0$0The US State Department calls him "one of the most significant sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world today".$0$0According to the US, Bin Laden was involved in at least three major attacks - the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 killing of 19 US soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and the 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0