VOA News / March 1, 2016
Ken Bredemeier
WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden, who ordered the 2001 al-Qaida attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people, claimed in his last will to have about $29 million in personal wealth, most of which he wanted spent “on jihad, for the sake of Allah.”
The United States released the will Tuesday, part of a cache of 113 documents seized at bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, when U.S. commandos killed him in a raid nearly five years ago.
The documents, written in Arabic and translated and declassified by U.S. intelligence agencies, were the second group of papers released that the U.S. Navy SEAL raiders grabbed from bin Laden’s hideaway, where he lived with his wife and other relatives. The U.S. said it plans to disclose still more documents later this year.
The documents, mostly dated from 2009 to 2011, show that bin Laden, 54 at the time he was killed, was increasingly worried that the United States would discover his whereabouts through spies in al-Qaida’s midst, drones in the air or secret tracking devices.
Tracking device concerns
In one instance, bin Laden expressed concern that a tracking device might have been placed in a suitcase filled with cash in a ransom exchange for an Afghan prisoner al-Qaida was holding.
“It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip in it,” bin Laden wrote in a letter to an aide identified only as “Shaykh Mahmud.”
Worried about U.S. drones tracking al-Qaida activities, bin Laden told al-Qaida fighters they should not leave their rented house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, “except on a cloudy overcast day.”
In another instance, bin Laden, writing under the pseudonym Abu Abdallah, worried that the U.S. might have followed his wife’s visit to a dentist in Iran, and possibly implanted a tracking chip in a filling.
“The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli,” he wrote. At the end of the note, he instructed: “Please destroy this letter after reading it.”
Wrongful execution
An undated, unsigned document admitted that al-Qaida had executed four would-be volunteers on suspicion of spying, only to realize later they were probably innocent. “I did not mention this to justify what has happened,” the writer said, adding, “We are in an intelligence battle, and humans are humans and no one is infallible.”
There was no immediate explanation of what might have been done with the $29 million that bin Laden claimed to have in Sudan, where he lived for five years as an official guest until he was asked to leave in May 1996 by the Islamic fundamentalist government then in power, under pressure from the United States.
He directed that one percent of the money go to Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a senior al-Qaida militant who went by the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al Mauritani, and another one percent to an engineer, Abu Ibrahim al-Iraqi Sa’ad, for helping establish bin Laden’s first business in Sudan, the Wadi al-Aqiq Company.
But bin Laden wanted the bulk of the money to go to jihadist activities.
“I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah,” he wrote.
He laid out specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be divided between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncle’s children and maternal aunts.
In a letter dated August 15, 2008, bin Laden asked that his father take care of his wife and children in the event he died first.
“My precious father: I entrust you well for my wife and children, and that you will always ask about them and follow upon their whereabouts and help them in their marriages and needs,” he said.
VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.