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Essam Al-Ridi
A veteran of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,Benjamin, Daniel & Steven Simon. "The Age of Sacred Terror", 2002 Essam al-Ridi was an American who was tasked to purchase a light aircraft by Osama bin Laden in 1993; but fled after accidentally crashing the plane into a sand dune. Life Born in Egypt, al-Ridi moved to the United States and settled down in Texas where he took flight lessons.PBSAvoiding Armageddon: Essam Alridi/ref> Eventually he became a flight instructor himself, teaching at the Ed Boardman Aviation School. In 1982, he went to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, becoming close colleagues with Osama bin Laden. He participated in the Battle of Jaji, but claimed that Arab claims of victory disillusioned him, and later returned to the United States. Sabrejet incident When al-Qaeda was moving into the Sudan in 1993, bin Laden asked al-Ridi, then living in Texas, to buy a light aircraft to ferry FIM-92 Stinger missiles and other materiel the group had acquired in Afg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk (Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |