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Was Bin Laden a Fan of Video Games?

Was Bin Laden a Fan of Video Games?

Saturday, 4 November, 2017 - 06:00
A boy plays with a tennis ball in front of Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. The house was later demolished. (File photo: Reuters)

Slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was apparently a fan of video games and cartoons, Britain’s The Daily Mail has reported.


Bin Laden played a number of popular games, including Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy VII and Dragon Ball Z, the newspaper said.


The revelation was discovered in a large batch of files and documents recovered from his computer after US forces killed him in a raid on his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011.


The documents were released on Wednesday by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).


The CIA documents also showed that bin Laden was a fan of cute viral videos on YouTube. One video that al-Qaeda’s leader liked to watch is the famous ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ clip from 2007.


Bin Laden also had the Biography channel's film about himself along with 'CNN Presents: World's Most Wanted.'


The latter film debuted in 2006 and featured the world's top three most-wanted terrorists: bin Laden, his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, and al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.


But the more bizarre files are Tom and Jerry cartoons and various children's films - including Ice Age and Chicken Little.


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