If He's So Bad, Why Is He Free?

By Bruce W. Nelan

Osama bin Laden may be everyone's prime suspect in the embassy bombings, but he doesn't act much like a fugitive. The Saudi-born millionaire runs a network of Islamic charitable and educational organizations from a well-equipped headquarters outside Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones and gives occasional interviews to international news organizations including TIME and CNN.

Much of the time bin Laden seems to be actively campaigning for the position of suspect No. 1. He says the people who bombed U.S. military installations in Saudi Arabia "are heroes." He promoted a fatwa, a religious decree, from clerics ordering attacks on Americans--military and civilian--around the world. And last May he called a press conference to announce the formation of an Islamic front dedicated to driving the U.S. out of the Persian Gulf area. It was the official birth of a loose coalition of Muslim radicals that has been around since the mujahedin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan--where bin Laden's legend was born.

According to a U.S. government report obtained by TIME last week, "Bin Laden has associated with the leaders of numerous Islamic terrorist groups since the Afghan war. He has trained their troops, provided safe haven and financial support and probably helps them with other organizational matters... Fighters from Egyptian, Algerian, Palestinian, Filipino and Jordanian terrorist groups have trained in his camps."

The Saudis stripped him of his citizenship, and Sudan, under U.S. pressure, forced him to leave his base there. But the Taliban, the Islamist rulers of most of Afghanistan, have not cracked down on him. In July the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal, flew to Kandahar and asked the black-turbaned Taliban leaders to keep bin Laden quiet. After the prince left, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the cleric who founded the Taliban movement, had a chat with bin Laden. "We told him," the mullah told TIME, "that as a guest he shouldn't involve himself in activities that create problems for us." Anyway, he added, "how can he do these bomb explosions when he's sitting so far away?"

Bin Laden's lair is probably secure as long as he maintains his cozy relations with the Taliban and with radical Islamists in next-door Pakistan. U.S. officials say photos from their spy satellites have spotted increased traffic in and out of bin Laden's camps, and they admit they don't know what to make of it. For bin Laden, it could simply be business as usual.

--By Bruce W. Nelan. Reported by Douglas Waller/Washington and Rahimullah Yusufzai/Peshawar

With reporting by Douglas Waller/Washington and Rahimullah Yusufzai/Peshawar