Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (Arabic: أسا‌مة بن محمد بن عو‌ض بن لا‌د‌ن, romanized: Usāma bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin; 10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born militant who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, his group is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various other countries.

Osama was born in Riyadh to the aristocratic bin Laden family. He studied at local universities until 1979, when he joined the Afghan mujahidin against the Soviet Union in the wake of the Afghan–Soviet War. In 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat which recruited foreign mujahidin into the war. He founded al-Qaeda in 1988 for worldwide jihad. In the Gulf War (1990–1991), Bin Laden's offer for support against Iraq was rebuked by the Saudi royal family, which instead sought American aid. Bin Laden's views on pan-Islamism and anti-Americanism resulted in his expulsion from Saudi Arabia in 1992. He subsequently shifted his headquarters to Sudan until 1996 when he left the country to establish a new base in Afghanistan, where he was supported by the Taliban. Bin Laden declared two fatawa, the first in August 1996, and the second in February 1998, declaring holy war against the United States. He orchestrated the 1998 United States embassy bombings in East Africa. He was then listed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists and Most Wanted Fugitives lists.

Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people. This resulted in the United States invading Afghanistan and launching the war on terror. Bin Laden became the subject of nearly a decade-long international manhunt. During this period, he hid in several mountainous regions of Afghanistan and later escaped to neighboring Pakistan. On 2 May 2011, Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special operations forces at his compound in Abbottabad. His corpse was buried at the Arabian Sea and he was officially succeeded by his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri on 16 June 2011.

Bin Laden grew to become a highly influential ideologue in the Islamic world. He was considered a war hero due to his role in successfully opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and offered an articulate voice and organizational structure to many across the region harbouring grievances against Western imperialism, often having approval ratings in some countries higher than those of national leaders. Nonetheless, his advocacy of attacking civilian targets made him a divisive figure, and in the Western world and Western culture he is reviled as a figurehead of mass murder. His role in the September 11 attacks has made public opinion of him in the United States unequivocally negative.