The Hindu : New Delhi News : Revealing Osama's world

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 18, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Revealing Osama's world

Television channel CNN will offer viewers a rare insight into the world of Osama bin Laden through a two-hour investigative programme this coming Thursday, August 24.

Titled "In the Footsteps of bin Laden", the programme will paint a revealing portrait of Osama and his transformation from a child to a man using first-hand accounts of the people who have known him throughout his life.

From his peaceful teenage years to orchestrating the diabolical 9/11 events, viewers are taken on a global journey tracing the path of Osama's life from his childhood home and school at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to his residence at Peshawar in Pakistan, where the dreaded Al-Qaeda was born and then to the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where he is being hunted today.

Using never-before-seen photographs, video and even the minutes of the meeting in which Al-Qaeda was created, CNN's new programme weaves a remarkable story of the world's most notorious terrorist.

Speaking about the programme, CNN International senior vice-president Rena Golden said: "For the first time his life, for so long cloaked in myth and mystery, has been documented by Christiane Amanpour for CNN's international audience."

Painstakingly filmed in ten countries across four continents, this one-of-its-kind programme features 21 first-person accounts of Osama from his relatives, childhood friends, former schoolteacher, co-jihadists, bodyguard and even the wife of an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber -- many of them breaking their silence for the first time on camera.

The documentary unravels the evolution of Osama's philosophy from the late 1970s through the unique personal perspective of Amanpour.

Interestingly, the programme is based on a book, "The Osama bin Laden I know", by CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen. The book offers numerous new details about Osama's transformation from a quiet, well-bred boy to the Western world's most wanted terrorist. An author and fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C., Bergen was a CNN producer at the time of the now famous interview with Osama in Afghanistan in March 1997. Bergen, along with others, is featured in the CNN documentary and is credited as a co-producer. -- Madhur Tankha

-- Madhur Tankha

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