Omar bin Laden

Bin Laden was born the grandson of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, the founder of one of the wealthiest non-royal families in Saudi Arabia, and the son of Osama bin Laden. Omar bin Laden accompanied his father on his exile to Sudan and then to Afghanistan. He has between 20 and 26 siblings, including 11 brothers. He said that he trained in al-Qaeda camps beginning at the age of 14, but after training with al-Qaeda for six years and sharing a house with al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, he left al-Qaeda in 2000 because he did not want to be associated with killing civilians. His father Osama did not object. In 2010, Omar bin Laden told ABC News that Osama had severely beaten him when he was a child for smiling too widely. ==Post-9/11==

Bin Laden ran his own company in Jeddah prior to 2006 as a contractor and scrap metal dealer. Marriage to Zaina Mohamed Al-Sabah Omar bin Laden married Jane Felix-Browne, who also goes by the name Zaina Mohamed Al-Sabah, a parish councillor from Moulton, near Northwich in Cheshire in the United Kingdom, on September 15, 2006. The marriage was conducted in September 2006 in Islamic ceremonies in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, after which the couple spent a few months together in Jeddah before his wife returned to Britain for several weeks. It has been reported that Felix-Browne met bin Laden while she was undergoing treatment for multiple sclerosis. They met on a horseback ride at the Giza pyramids in Egypt. After two weeks, they decided not to part. In January 2008, bin Laden applied for a British spousal immigration visa which would have permitted him to reside indefinitely at his wife's home in Moulton, Cheshire, a process which required him to provide original documentation of his divorce from his first wife. The couple stated their desire to have a child using a surrogate mother. One report stated the visa application was denied because bin Laden failed to provide his father's permanent address. A later report by The Times of bin Laden's appeal stated that the visa had been denied by an entry clearance officer at the UK embassy in Cairo because bin Laden's entry would cause "considerable public concern." The officer was quoted "I note that statements made during recent media interviews indicate evidence of continuing loyalty to your father, and your presence in the UK could, therefore, cause considerable public concern." This written statement was shown to the Associated Press by the couple's legal firm, but Britain's Home Office declined to comment to the press on an individual case. In April 2008, bin Laden and Al-Sabah said they planned to appeal the ruling, calling it "unjust and arbitrary", stating that Al-Sabah requires medical attention in Britain and that her appeal to live with him in Saudi Arabia could take years to process. As of April 2008, bin Laden has a house in Cairo. In April 2010, bin Laden was denied a visa to promote his book Osama bin Laden: A Family Portrait in France and elsewhere in Europe. Specifically, the countries of the Schengen zone, a block of 25 nations across Europe including Germany, France and Spain, rejected his request for a visa. North African horse race track through the Mauritanian Sahara, 2005 In January 2008, an Associated Press interview in Cairo featured bin Laden with cornrows and a black leather biker jacket promoting a horse race for peace across North Africa. Bin Laden described the race as an equine counterpart to the canceled 2008 Paris-Dakar car rally, saying, "I heard the rally was stopped because of al-Qaeda. I don't think they are going to stop me." The race was canceled after the killings of four French tourists near Aleg, Mauritania on Christmas Eve in 2007. Following the murders, race organizers received threats directly from heavily armed and organized groups linked to al-Qaeda, which led them to cancel the race on January 4, 2008, and soon after to plan the 2009 event for South America. Police in Guinea-Bissau said that two of five men arrested for the crime on January 11, 2008, admitted their involvement with al-Qaeda. Relationship to his father and al-Qaeda Bin Laden said that his father felt that he was just trying to defend the Islamic world, He said, "The last time I saw my father was in 2000, 2001. I was in Saudi Arabia and felt a terrible sorrow for all the victims [of the September 11 attacks]", "My father has a kind heart", and "I do not believe my father is dead, otherwise I would have known it; the world would have known it." When asked whether he would tell the Americans if he found out where his father was living, he said with a smile, "Actually, I would hide him. Because he is my father." Bin Laden said that his father offered a truce to Europe in a 2004 videotape and a conditional truce with the United States in a 2006 videotape. "My father is asking for a truce but I don't think there is any government (that) respects him. At the same time they do not respect him, why everywhere in the world, they want to fight him? There is a contradiction." The truces offered in these videos of Osama bin Laden were promptly rejected at the time. After arriving in Rome from Switzerland amid heavy security on February 2, 2008, bin Laden said in a television interview that night "I would very much like to meet the Pope in Saint Peter's, but I have been told that it is not easy." Bin Laden filed another British visa petition in 2008. Growing Up bin Laden Bin Laden and his mother Najwa bin Laden published a book authored in late October 2009, titled Growing Up bin Laden. According to media coverage, the book details that "the kids grew up in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Afghanistan without laughter or toys, were routinely beaten, and lost their pets to painful death from poison gas experiments by their father's fighters." It states that Osama bin Laden tried to persuade his son to volunteer for suicide missions and exposed him to dangerous conditions visiting training camps in Afghanistan and sending him to the front lines of the Afghan civil war. The book describes the family living in Jeddah without air conditioning or refrigeration, treating asthma with honeycombs and onions, and eventually moving to stone huts in Tora Bora without electricity or running water in 1996. Subsequent correspondence with the Associated Press indicated that 25 bin Laden family members had moved to Iran, following U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Death of his father Bin Laden published a complaint on May 10, 2011 that the burial at sea of his father deprived the family of a proper burial, and that the U.S. violated international laws by not providing a trial for his father. He made several other claims regarding the mission that killed his father, such as stating that no one living at the compound was armed. He also requested that the United Nations and other international groups investigate the killing of Osama bin Laden as a criminal matter. The U.S. ignored his demands, and as of 2025 have not reconsidered whether to engage with them. == See also ==