uted messages calling for the murder of unbelievers.
lowers became important members in the new organization, and his own close
ties with Bin Ladin led many to think of him as the deputy head of al Qaeda. He
would in fact become Bin Ladin's deputy some years later,when they merged their
organizations.
By the fall of 1989, Bin Ladin had sufficient stature among Islamic extremists
that a Sudanese political leader, Hassan al Turabi, urged him to transplant his
whole organization to Sudan. Turabi headed the National Islamic Front in a
coalition that had recently seized power in Khartoum.
Sudan and also to do some road building.Turabi in return would let Bin Ladin
use Sudan as a base for worldwide business operations and for preparations for
jihad.
monarchy that he summon mujahideen for a jihad to retake Kuwait. He was
rebuffed, and the Saudis joined the U.S.-led coalition. After the Saudis agreed
to allow U.S. armed forces to be based in the Kingdom, Bin Ladin and a num-
ber of Islamic clerics began to publicly denounce the arrangement.The Saudi
government exiled the clerics and undertook to silence Bin Ladin by, among
other things, taking away his passport.With help from a dissident member of
the royal family, he managed to get out of the country under the pretext of
attending an Islamic gathering in Pakistan in April 1991.
encompass numerous companies and a global network of bank accounts and
nongovernmental institutions. Fulfilling his bargain with Turabi, Bin Ladin used
his construction company to build a new highway from Khartoum to Port
Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Meanwhile, al Qaeda finance officers and top oper-
atives used their positions in Bin Ladin's businesses to acquire weapons, explo-
sives, and technical equipment for terrorist purposes. One founding member,
Abu Hajer al Iraqi, used his position as head of a Bin Ladin investment com-
pany to carry out procurement trips from western Europe to the Far East.Two
others,Wadi al Hage and Mubarak Douri, who had become acquainted in Tuc-