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The New Jackals: Osama Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism
By
Simon Reeve
The first book on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, this New York Times bestseller warns of a new age of apocalyptic terrorism. According to ‘The New Jackals’ a group of several thousand men who fought against the Soviets during the 1980s Afghan War have since dominated international terrorism. Author Simon Reeve warns that many of these men, known as the ‘Afghan Arabs’, have become a new breed of terrorist, militants with no restrictions on mass killing. Reeve spent years investigating the two most dangerous ‘Afghan Arabs’: Osama bin Laden, currently the most wanted man in the world, and Ramzi Yousef, the young British-educated mastermind of the massive bombing of the World Trade Center bombing (WTC) in 1993. Yousef’s attack resulted in more hospital casualties than any event in American history since the Civil War. He is described by experts as a modern ‘Carlos the Jackal’ because of his astonishing crimes. The New Jackals is a true-life investigative thriller, with details of a tense two-year manhunt told through interviews with a senior FBI agent, but it also includes a series of major revelations. For example the book offers the first real insight into bin Laden’s early years. The New Jackals also reveals that in the 1993 WTC attack Ramzi Yousef wanted to topple one tower of the building into the other (killing perhaps 250,000 people) with a massive radioactive bomb that would have forced the evacuation of much of New York. The author details how Yousef detonated a bomb on a plane over Japan, planned to kill the Pope and President Clinton, blew-up an Iranian shrine, plotted to attack CIA headquarters with chemical weapons, and was stopped just days before he was due to simultaneously destroy 11 airliners over the Pacific. The New Jackals sheds new light on Yousef and bin Laden, describing them as the first of a new breed of terrorist, and reveals how they have been responsible for some of the bloodiest and most audacious acts of terrorism in history. Highly detailed and yet immensely readable, The New Jackals is one of the most prophetic books of the last decade. It is essential reading for anyone seeking insights into the new breed of terrorist behind the devastating strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A new epilogue by author Simon Reeve assesses the current status of the sinister al Qaeda network and warns the West remains vulnerable to further apocalyptic attacks.
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