Journal uncovers bin Laden’s hate for West began in Stratford ‘Loose’ people of Shakespeare’s birthplace sparked Islamist terrorist’s hatred after teen trip
OSAMA bin Laden’s diary reveals that a trip to Shakspeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon sparked his hatred of the West.
The journal, just revealed by the CIA, shows that a trip to the Midlands when he was 13 years old horrified him.
The schoolboy who became the world’s most wanted terrorist mastermind was shocked by the town’s loose morals. Bin Laden was killed in a US operation in Pakistan in 2011, during which the diary was recovered.
The man held responsible for the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, and the London bombings of 2005, found Stratford decadent.
Bin Laden is thought to have travelled here for an unspecified “treatment” when he was in “sixth grade”.
He briefly describes visiting the home of William Shakespeare in the Midlands’ tourist hotspot.
But, tellingly, he says he was “not impressed” by UK culture and society. “I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didn’t allow me to form a complete picture of life there,” he wrote. “We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeare’s house. I was not impressed. I saw that they were a society different from ours, and they were a morally loose society.”
His trip to Warwickshire, he says, convinced bin Laden that the West was “decadent”.
The CIA has released a huge cache of files recovered from computers after he was killed in a raid at his compound in Abbottabad in May 2011.
The 470,000 files include videos including explicit executions alongside ringtones for his phone and cartoons such as Tom and Jerry.
Bin Laden’s personal journal includes an entry written just the day before his death, among more than 18,000 documents, while there are approximately 79,000 audio and image files.
There are more than 10,000 video files, featuring a video of his son Hamza Bin Ladin as a young adult, alQaeda “home videos” and the beheading of US hostage Jack Hensely. More bizarre are lots of Tom and Jerry cartoons and various children’s films, including Ice Age and Chicken Little.
The CIA says the files have been released to further enhance public understanding of Al-Qaeda. The agency adds that many files from the collection will remain unreleased, including pornography, copyrighted materials, and files that ‘directly damage efforts to keep the nation secure’. that