The killing of Osama Bin Laden

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.We start with the launch of Expedition Robinson in Sweden in 1997 and discuss how reality TV began around the world with our guest Misha Kavka, Professor of Cross-Media Culture a ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.We start with the broadcaster and naturalist, Sir David Attenborough. To mark his 100th birthday, we go back to the mid 1950s and the television programme that launched his caree ...  Show more

The US tracked down the al-Qaeda leader to a city in northern Pakistan in May 2011. Special operations troops were sent to capture or kill Bin Laden in a top secret raid in the dead of night. The Americans did not tell their Pakistani allies about the raid beforehand. Gabriela Jo ...  Show more

When the Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan agreed to go and interview Osama bin Laden in 1996 he was apprehensive. By the time he reached the Al-Qaeda leader's mountain hideout - he was shaken and scared - but what was the man himself really like? Claire Bowes reports.This ...  Show more

When the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan in 2001, the hunt for Osama bin Laden began in earnest. One American in particular led the search. He was CIA commander, Gary Berntsen, who had been tracking the al-Qaeda leader for years. In December 2001 he ordered a small ...  Show more

On Monday, President Biden announced that the United States had killed Ayman al-Zawahri in a drone strike in Afghanistan. 

Al-Zawahri was the leader of Al Qaeda. A long time number two to Osama bin Laden and the intellectual spine of the terrorist group, he assumed power ...