Do you enjoy Tom and Jerry cartoons? What about Mr Bean? Got a crochet project on the go?
If your answer to any of those questions is yes, you may have at least one thing in common with Osama bin Laden.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
While the Al-Qaeda leader became notorious for his home-made videos threatening doom to the West, but his own video tastes appear to have run to the more benign.
Among the 10,000 video files found on Bin Laden’s computer were YouTube clips, Mr Bean movies, family animations such as Chicken Little and Cars and more than 20 episodes of Tom and Jerry.
Some of the videos are chilling in their familiarity to any family, including a wedding video for Bin Laden’s son Hamza, which includes shots of “boys playing football, decorations including red heart-shaped balloons and wedding food,” the BBC reports.
Other files reflect Bin Laden’s fascination with how he was portrayed by Western media - his video collection included news reports and three documentaries about himself, the BBC reports, “including one called Where in the World is Osama bin Laden”.
The video cache also contained 28 crochet tutorials, suggestive of the restricted life led by Bin Laden and his family in hiding.
What’s more, the world’s most wanted terrorist had to go to extraordinary lengths to enjoy the likes of Charlie Bit My Finger and viral cat videos.
The remote hideout did not have its own internet connection, says The Independent, which “presumably means that the videos were instead brought to him on a hard drive or similar, and loaded onto his computer for watching later”.
However, Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Bill Roggio told Wired that while it is “quite possible” that Bin Laden was a crochet aficionado with a weakness for Tom and Jerry, “I suspect a lot of the sort of frivolous or the personal stuff was more for his family”.
When US special forces raided the compound in May 2011, Bin Laden was living with his five children and four of his grandchildren, along with several wives and an adult son who was killed in the raid.
-
How the FCC’s ‘equal time’ rule worksIn the Spotlight The law is at the heart of the Colbert-CBS conflict
-
What is the endgame in the DHS shutdown?Today’s Big Question Democrats want to rein in ICE’s immigration crackdown
-
‘Poor time management isn’t just an inconvenience’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Epstein files topple law CEO, roil UK governmentSpeed Read Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the US, is caught up in the scandal
-
Iran and US prepare to meet after skirmishesSpeed Read The incident comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East
-
Israel retrieves final hostage’s body from GazaSpeed Read The 24-year-old police officer was killed during the initial Hamas attack
-
China’s Xi targets top general in growing purgeSpeed Read Zhang Youxia is being investigated over ‘grave violations’ of the law
-
Panama and Canada are negotiating over a crucial copper mineIn the Spotlight Panama is set to make a final decision on the mine this summer
-
Why Greenland’s natural resources are nearly impossible to mineThe Explainer The country’s natural landscape makes the task extremely difficult
-
Iran cuts internet as protests escalateSpeed Reada Government buildings across the country have been set on fire
-
US nabs ‘shadow’ tanker claimed by RussiaSpeed Read The ship was one of two vessels seized by the US military
