Holed up in one of his heavily guarded mountain hideouts in southern Afghanistan last Tuesday, a bearded, six-foot-five tall man of quiet disposition learned he was the top suspect for one of the worst terrorist atrocities in history.
As Osama bin Laden's name and picture flashed up on news channels all over the world, the Arab "folk hero" no doubt prepared to move base to another of the many strongholds he has developed in the barren, war-torn country. The heat was on.
Whether or not he was responsible for the devastation caused by the attack on the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Centre, bin Laden will have been thrilled at the tremors of shock sent all over the world. Within hours of the attacks, one of his aides was quoted as saying while he did not carry them out, he supported the actions taken.
His sole mission in life has been to unite Muslims throughout the world against the Christian occupation of Arab land. He believes he is following Allah's orders to cleanse Muslim territory of all non-believers. As part of this mission he has issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Americans where they can and when they can.
As the full horror of the American attack was unfolding, stunned CIA and American State Department chiefs swung into action.
As far as intelligence sources are concerned, the Islamic extremist is one of the few terrorist leaders in the world capable of orchestrating the daring attack, which required precision planning and co-ordination. Bin laden has menace and money and is credited with the brains, resources and elaborate network to plan and carry out an attack of this enormity. Many people will have only heard of Osama bin Laden's name for the first time this week. But he is no stranger to intelligence forces all over the world. Not since the heyday of the famed terrorist, Carlos, in the 1970s, has there been such a Prince of Darkness, if all the allegations against him are to be believed.
There are several reasons to suspect bin Laden for being behind the brutal attack which, until last week at least, was beyond the imaginations of even the most far-fetched of thriller-fiction writers.
Bin Laden has been blamed for a number of global terror plots in the past decade, specialising in multiple attacks. Members of his al-Qaeda organisation carried out the simultaneous assaults on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, killing 224 people. He is also blamed for the strike on the US destroyer, Cole, in Yemen last October, which killed 17 sailors.
The World Trade Centre has particular resonance for bin Laden as it was there that the first major terrorist attack on American soil was mounted in 1993 when a group of Egyptian, Pakistani and Palestinian terrorists planted a car bomb in the basement car park of one of the now toppled towers.
American investigators have long suspected that bin Laden was involved.
Groups who pay him allegiance are blamed for a failed scheme to hijack five aircraft simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean in the early 1990s. In recent months, organisations affiliated to him have attempted attacks in India, Canada and Europe.
He was falsely accused of being behind the Oklahoma bombing which turned out to be the work of the disgruntled former US serviceman, Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for that crime earlier this summer.
In 1998, the then US president, Bill Clinton, described bin Laden as "perhaps the pre-eminent organiser and financier of international terrorism in the world today". He made his comments after claims that bin Laden was connected to a plot to assassinate him during a visit to Pakistan.
President Clinton said there was "compelling" evidence that a network of terrorist groups he controlled was planning "further attacks against Americans and other freedom loving groups".
His chilling prediction came home to roost at 8.50 a.m. US time last Tuesday morning.
There is nothing in particular in bin Laden's early background that explains his obsession with Muslim unity and hatred of America. Born Usamah Bin Mohammad Bin Laden in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1957, he was the 17th of 57 children sired with ten wives by his father, Yemeni, construction magnate and close friend of the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden's father made his money on contracts to renovate the mosques of Mecca and Medina and it was some of this wealth that helped fund terrorist activities in later years.
He took a master's degree in business administration at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, but soon switched to Islamic studies. He is remembered for being quiet and pious.
Bin Laden's conversion to radical Muslim terrorism started in the early '70s when he began his interaction with Islamic groups. He was inspired by the Afghan jihad struggle against the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and joined that struggle in 1979.
Ironically, at that stage, bin Laden was in the same camp as the Americans who were funding the Afghan resistance against the Russians.
In 1989, bin Laden set up Al'Qaeda (the Base) in Peshawar in Pakistan as a service centre for Arab-Afghans and their families to promote Wahabbism, the strict brand of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia.
Disillusioned with the bickering among various Afghan groups, he returned the following year to Saudi Arabia. It is during this period that his hatred for the United States was nurtured. He became virulently anti-American after US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf war and he was a critic of the Saudi Royal Family's decision to allow in American troops to attack Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait.
To bin Laden, the American presence in Saudi Arabia, home of the holy Islamic sites of Mecca and Medina, was a sacrilege that he vowed to reverse. He left for Sudan to help the Islamic revolution there and once again he gathered around him Arab veterans from the Afghan war.
In the intervening years, bin Laden has built up a terrifying infrastructure of fanaticism all over the world, drawing on a broad association of similarly motivated extremist groups. He has used some of the $250 million he inherited from his father to build up his network and has also been funded by wealthy Islamic sympathisers.
It is believed he has some 3,000 Arab radicals from 12 different countries in Afghanistan, many of whom fight for the Taliban in the "055 Arab Brigade" which bin Laden commands.
From Morocco to Oman, bin Laden would appear to have a mesmeric effect on the Arab populace and among millions of Muslims elsewhere in the world. In Palestine he is described as a "beloved of God". In Pakistan he is "the Lion" and is considered a "soldier of Islam" in Afghanistan.
While the West quickly forgot the Arabs who fought Moscow, the Afghans didn't. When bin Laden was expelled from Sudan where he had fled after being ordered out of his homeland for dissident behaviour, the extreme fundamentalist Taliban militia regime in Kabul welcomed home their old friend as a hero of the anti-Soviet resistance of the 1980s.
The most alarming development for the West has been the fact that bin Laden has been getting stronger rather than weaker in Afghanistan and virtually rules the place.
From his network of safe houses, he allegedly can plan and organise terrorist strikes around the world, despite the suggestions to the contrary made by Taliban spokesmen in the last few days.
Bin Laden is believed to be a close friend of the Taliban leader, Mullar Mohammed Omar. It is said both go fishing together in the ponds near Farmihadda, south of Jelalabad on the Kabul-Peshawar road.
Although a multimillionaire, he has long given up the creature comforts of a wealthy Arab to dedicate himself to his cause and is happy living among his fighters.
Legend has it that the Kalashnikov rifle he carries with him came from a red Army solider he disarmed during the Afghan war against the Soviets.
Places like Kandahar, one of Afghanistan's biggest cities, offer him the anonymity and the supplies he needs to keep a low profile.
Perched on a trade route between Pakistan to the south and the former Soviet republic to the north, shops in Kandahar's maze-like back alleys are stocked with smuggled foods.
The freedom the Taliban has given him to operate has stymied Washington in its bid to track down the terrorist. Aware that his satellite phone calls can be intercepted, he employs a clever combination of old and new communications to carry out orders.
According to US intelligence sources, bin Laden enlists Pony Express couriers to carry encrypted floppy disks filled with data, which are passed onto other couriers from target nations. Once in the hands of the target nations' cell, a disk is de-encrypted.
The Saudi exile was most recently seen in January reading poetry at his son's wedding in Kandahar. At regular intervals in the past few years, he has given interviews to a number of journalists and has made clear his abhorrence of all things American.
In one wide-ranging interview in one of his strongholds back in May 1988 with ABC journalist, John Miller, bin Laden gave some insight into what inspires his absolute hatred of America. He prefaced most of his replies with the exclamation: "praise be to Allah".
Bin Laden spoke of the fatwa he issued calling on all Muslims to kill Americans where they can, and when they can. He expressed little concern about the price being put on his head by the United States.
"It does not worry us what the Americans think. What worries us is pleasing Allah. The Americans impose themselves on everyone who believes in his religion and his rights....We as Muslims believe that our fate is set. If the whole world decides to get together and kill us before our time has come, we will not die, our livelihood is set.
"No matter how much pressure America places on the regime in Riyadh to freeze our assets and to prevent people from contributing to this great cause, we rely on Allah". He went on to castigate Washington for "not distinguishing between civilians and military, and not even women and children" in their foreign policy.
At various stages, he talked about the Americans as the "biggest thieves in the world and the terrorists are the Americans".
"On the other side, American policy does not admit to differentiating between civilians, military and child, human or animal. Examples I mentioned before are Nagasaki and Hiroshima where they tried to eliminate a whole people."
Bin Laden recently released a long video during which he repeated his usual vitriol against America. An Arab journalist in London said this week that he had heard talk of "unprecedented" action against the United States. This seems to fit bin Laden's habit of virtually advertising his forthcoming attacks.
Many have been asking why this demon has not been put out of action before now.
One of the problems is while there is no doubt that bin Laden is a sworn enemy of the US, with the financial means to put some teeth into that enmity, there has been a distinct lack of evidence of his crimes.
The reality is that so far, no government, not even the US, has established enough credible evidence against him to prove his direct participation in any of the ugly plots and acts he stands accused of.
In the last year, the US has been building an international alliance to strangle the Taliban leadership and eliminate the threat of its resident terrorist.
Pressure has been brought to bear on Pakistan to halt support for the regime.
While the former Clinton administration made catching bin Laden and crippling his organisation the centre-piece of its Afghan policy, the Bush administration has been targeting the Taliban and the small extremist clique that surrounds its leader Mullah Mo hammed Omar.
Senior US officials believe that removing the Talibans from power is a prerequisite to catching bin Laden and ending the civil war in Afghanistan.
Counter-terrorism experts say the best approach is a push by Washington to forge an alliance with Russia and the three Central Asian states to hit at both bin Laden's forces and the Taliban. Washington has been pressing the United Nations Security Council for tougher sanctions against the Taliban.
Following this week's attacks, Washington looks set to form an even greater alliance against terrorism with bin Laden and Afghanistan likely to be the focal points.
Last March, a commission on national security argued that a "catastrophic attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralisation that could undermine US global leadership. In the face of this threat our nation has no coherent or integrated government structures".
This week, the world has witnessed terrifying deeds and was shown to be so vulnerable in the face of what many believe was Islamic extremism.
In an interview three years ago, bin Laden gave a chilling preview of what came to pass on Tuesday: "We predict a black day for America and the end of the United States as united states."