Osama Bin Laden (b. 1957)

Osama Bin Muhammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957 – the 17^th of 52 children, born into Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest construction family. In 1979 Bin Laden gradu­ated with a degree in Civil Engineering and in the same year his violent terrorist roots were formed when he joined the mujahadeen movement in Afghanistan.

During 1986 –1989, Bin Laden established the now notorious “Al Quaeda” network – an organization of ex-mujahadeen, with a murderous mission to provide fighters and funds for the Afghan armed struggle. As a result of the increasingly violent policies, allegedly dictated by Bin Laden, there followed a series of terrorist actions across the globe. The first was an explosion in a hotel in Aden and then the New York World Trade Centre bombing in 2001. Bin Laden is now on a mission to promote his terrorist ideas in the name of Islam, driven by his belief that violence is the only policy. His fanatical terrorist views include the concept of suicide attacks.

Bin Laden’s Jihad (holy war) reached a peak in 2001, resulting in the world’s most devastat­ing terrorist outrage – destruction of the New York World Trade Centre and an attack on the Pentagon in Washington on Sept 11^th, where 3,500 souls perished.

Bin Laden has enormous personal wealth and he could spend his life in tranquil luxury, but he has chosen to support violent terrorist groups. It could be argued he has symptoms of a con­trol freak. It is interesting to observe that although he is only in his fifties, he looks much older and walks with a curved back and with a walking stick. This may be a classic example of some­body who is physically inferior but seeks power and violence as a substitute.

From Russia, With Love a Moscow jury found Alexander Pichushkin – chessboard killer – guilty of 48 murders.

A supermarket worker suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in post-Soviet Russia went on trial, glaring from a cage and dismissing a defense lawyer; relatives of victims called for his death.

The accused, Aleksandr Y. Pichushkin, 33, is charged with 49 counts of murder, part of what the authorities describe as a macabre and sustained scheme to kill one person for every square on a chessboard.

Mr. Pichushkin appeared in Moscow City Court – pale, scarred and coldly defiant – and paced slowly in a cage. When the judge asked him to sit, one of the victims’ relatives shouted, “On the needles!”

He was originally known as the Bitsevsky Maniac, a nickname derived from the park where he is accused of luring people into drinking sessions that ended with their being drowned in a sewer or pounded to death with a hammer or other blunt object.

After his arrest, investigators said he claimed to have marked off a square on a chessboard for every victim, with a goal of filling all 64. The Russian news media promptly assigned him a new name: the Chessboard Killer.

Pichushkin was arrested in Bitsa Park on June 16, 2006. In an interview on the national NTV station after his arrest, Mr. Pichushkin spoke of killing as if it was both ordinary and required. “For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you,” he said. “One’s first murder, like first love, is impossible to forget,” Pichushkin told the court. “I was always killing for one reason, because I liked life so much. As soon as you kill, you want to live more”.

One of his main deceptions was to befriend pensioners and alcoholics, and tell them that he was grieving over the death of his dog. Then, he would invite them for a drink in the woods at what he said was the dog’s grave. After drinking vodka with them he would pounce.

Relatives of victims wept and vented their hatred for him outside the court.

The authorities also say that Mr. Pichushkin claimed to have killed at least 61 people, yet they have found evidence only for 49 murders and three attempted murders.

One of Mr. Pichushkin’s goals, prosecutors said, was to kill at least 53 people, one more than the number of victims of Andrei Chikatilo, the so-called Rostov Ripper. Mr. Chikatilo was convicted of 52 murders in 1992 and executed by firing squad in 1994.

Pichushkin was found guilty of 48 murders and three attempted murders. Pichushkin’s life sentence is the maximum possible under the Russian Criminal Code. The country imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 1996. But one of the victim’s relative proposed a harsher fate. “I would chop off his limbs myself, limb by limb, and do it publicly,” she said. “He does not deserve to walk on this earth.”

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