RT has had an inside look of what it is like to work for the most wanted man on earth, Osama Bin Laden. Noman Benotman, a former Bin Laden associate, reveals why he is now encouraging extremists to give up violence.

“I think now all the Islamic groups should give up their arms struggle and give it back to the governments, whether we like them or not. It’s not love and hate – it’s politics,” he said.

Benotman added that they used to talk about the escalation of the war against the US and the West.

“We were aware blood was going to escalate the war after the ’98 attack against the two US embassies in East Africa, so that was the main argument: “You need to stop, you have to stop this war because it’s going to bring chaos, disaster and harm to Muslims and Afghanistan specifically.” But he [Bin Laden] insisted at the time that he could not cancel this one operation because it was too late and he said that it could demoralize the whole organization, that he should have carried on with that operation and after that he would really try to do his best to stop the war,” Benotman recalled.

Noman Benotman says people who are responsible of launching war everywhere in the world against many nations, countries and societies, have hijacked Jihad and Islam itself.

“Let’s talk about jihad as a religious duty or concept. It is something mentioned in [the] Koran at least 40 times. We believe [the] Koran is something that has been revealed by God to [the] Prophet Mohammed, it’s not like someone just came up with the idea. Jihad is not just a religious duty. I think jihad should be understood within the strategic calculations, because it is war. What we see now is that Al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups do not have the support from the Muslim countries – and they don’t have the support from the scholars which is a very important issue,” Benotman said.