Bin Laden family

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Office building of the bin Laden family. Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The bin Laden family (Arabic: بن لادن‎), also spelled bin Ladin, is an immensely wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. The family was thrown into media spotlight through the activities of one of its members, Osama bin Laden. The financial interests of the bin Laden family are represented by the Saudi Binladin Group, a global construction and equity management congolomerate grossing 5 billion U.S. dollars annually, and one of the the largest construction firms in the Islamic world, with offices in London and Geneva. ^[1]

The family traces its origins to a poor, uneducated Yemenite, Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden (died 1967). Mohammed bin Laden was a native of the Chafeite (Sunni) Hadhramaut coast in southern Yemen and emigrated to Saudi Arabia prior to World War I. He set up a construction company and came to Abdul Aziz ibn Saud's attention through construction projects, later being awarded contracts for major renovations at Mecca, where he made his initial fortune from exclusive rights to all mosque and other religious building construction not only in Saudi Arabia, but as far as Ibn Saud's influence reached. Until his death, Mohammed bin Laden had exclusive control over restorations at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Soon the bin Laden corporate network extended far beyond construction sites.

Mohammed's special intimacy with the monarchy was inherited by the younger bin Laden generation. Mohammed's sons attended Victoria College, Alexandria Egypt. Their schoolmates included King Hussein of Jordan, Zaid Al Rifai, the Kashoggi brothers (whose father was one of the king's physicians), Kamal Adham (who ran the Saudi security services under King Faisal), present-day contractors Mohammed Al Attas, Fahd Shobokshi and Ghassan Sakr and even actor Omar Sharif.

When Mohammed bin Laden died in 1967, his son Salem bin Laden took over the family enterprises, until his own accidental death in 1988. Salem was one of at least 54 children by various wives.

1 The Mecca event
2 Bin Ladens and King Fahd
3 Business connections of the Bush and bin Laden families
4 Family members
5 References

[edit] The Mecca event

The bin Laden connection with the House of Saud was severely strained in 1979, when pro-Iranian Islamist insurgents briefly took control of the mosque at Mecca. Trucks owned by the family had been used to smuggle arms into the tightly controlled city. Mahrous bin Laden had been the enabler, working with the Islamist insurgency. His connection was through the son of a Sultan of Yemen who had been radicalized by Syrian members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mahrous was actually arrested for a time, but is now managing the Medina branch of the bin Laden enterprises.

[edit] Bin Ladens and King Fahd

The two closest friends of King Fahd were Prince Mohammed ben Abdullah (son of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud's youngest brother) who died in the early 1980s and Salem bin Laden who died in 1988, when a plane that he was flying flew into powerlines in San Antonio, Texas. PBS "Frontline".

[edit] Business connections of the Bush and bin Laden families

Michael Moore's highly critical theatrical documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 alleges strong business connections between the Bush family and the bin Laden family. Moore based most of his claims on Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud which relates how Salem bin Laden invested through James R. Bath, the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, some money in Arbusto Energy, a company run by George W. Bush [1].

Several members of the Bush family are investors in the Carlyle Group, a defense contractor and investment fund with numerous interests in the Mideast, run by former Bush administration Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.^[2] The media noted that former President George H. W. Bush attended an investment meeting at the Washington, D.C. Ritz-Carlton hotel on September 10, 2001 and in particular a meeting with Shafiq bin Laden, representing joint interests of the Saudi Binladin Group and Carlyle.^[3] (Bush did not attend the morning of September 11, although it has been alleged that the meeting took place during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Former Secretary of State James Baker was present, along with Carlucci.^[3]) The Carlyle and Binladin groups mutually severed their business relationship on October 26, 2001.^[3]

The New York Times reported that beginning on September 11, the bin Laden family were quickly called together by officials from the Saudi Embassy, which feared that they might become the victims of American reprisals. With approval from the F.B.I., according to a Saudi official, the bin Ladens flew by private jet from Los Angeles to Orlando, then on to Washington, D.C. and finally to Boston. Once the FAA permitted overseas flights, the jet flew to Europe.

[edit] Family members

American and European intelligence officials estimate that all the relatives of the family may number as much as 600, and that several members of the bin Laden family sympathize with Osama. The Saudi government has said that the family signed a statement officially disowning Osama in 1994. The Saudi government also stripped Osama bin Laden of his citizenship, for publicly speaking out against them, after they permitted U.S. troops to be based in Saudi Arabia in preparation for the 1991 Gulf War.

The groupings of the family, based on the nationalities of the wives, include the most prominent "Saudi group", a "Syrian group", a "Lebanese group," and an "Egyptian group". The Egyptian group employs 40,000 people as that country's largest private foreign investor. Osama bin Laden was born the only son of Muhammed bin Laden's tenth wife^[4], Hamida al-Attas, who was of Syria origin^[5], making Osama a member of the Syrian group.

[edit] First generation

Muhammed Awad bin Laden (born c. 1906 in Yemen), the family patriarch; before World War I, Muhammed, originally poor and uneducated, emigrated from Hadhramaut, on the south coast of Yemen, to the Red Sea port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he began to work as a porter. Starting his own business in 1930, Muhammed built his fortune as a building contractor for the Saudi royal family during the 1950s. Married 22 times, with about 55 children; Osama bin Laden was born as the 17th. He died in a 1967 plane crash in Saudi Arabia, and control passed to his son, Salem.

Alia Ghanem (born in Syria) Muhammed's 10th wife, and mother of Osama; divorced soon after Osama was born, and remarried Osama's stepfather c. 1958 ^[6].

Muhammad al-Attas Osama's stepfather, in whose household Osama was raised at Jeddah; worked at the bin Laden company. The couple had four children, Osama's three half-brothers and one half-sister.

Abdullah bin Laden, uncle of OBL; headed SBG, died in Medina, March 21, 2002, at age 75.^[7]

[edit] Second generation

Salem bin Laden (born 1946) attended Millfield, the English boarding school; took over the family empire in 1967; an amateur rock guitarist in the 1970s; married an English art student, Caroline Carey, whose half brother Ambrose Douglas is the son of the Marquess of Queensberry in Scotland; during the 1980's he aided the Reagan Administration, which secretly arranged for an estimated thirty-four million dollars to be funnelled through Saudi Arabia to the Contras, in Nicaragua, according to French intelligence; was killed outside San Antonio, Texas, when an experimental ultralight plane that he was flying got tangled in power lines.

Tarek bin Laden, b. 1947; once called "the personification of the dichotomy (conservativism and change) of Saudi Arabia."^[8] In the 1990s, TBL was general supervisor of the International Islamic Relief Organization.

Bakr bin Laden, succeeded Salem as chairman of the Saudi Binladin Group upon his death in 1988; major power broker in Jeddah.

Hassan bin Laden, senior vice president of the SBG.

Yehia bin Laden, also active in the SBG; in 2001 owned 16 percent of Cambridge, MA-based Hybridon, Inc.^[9]

Mahrous bin Laden was implicated in the Grand Mosque Seizure, carried out by dissidents against the Saudi ruling family at the Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, on November 20, 1979. This event shook the Muslim world with the ensuing violence and killing of hundreds at the holiest of Islamic sites. Trucks owned by the family were reported to have been used to smuggle arms into the tightly controlled city. The bin Laden connection was through the son of a Sultan of Yemen who had been radicalized by Syrian members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mahrous was actually arrested for a time, but in the Saudi government response, he was not beheaded along with 63 others who were, their public executions broadcast on live Saudi television. Later exonerated, he joined the family business, and became manager of the Medina branch of the bin Laden enterprises, and a member of the board.

Osama bin Laden (born 1957 in Saudi Arabia) founder of al-Qaeda and one of the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists.

Najwa Ghanem (born c. 1957 in Syria) Osama's first wife, married 1974; a first cousin, and his mother's niece.

(female) al-Attas (born c. 1960), half sister of Osama, daughter of Alia Ghanem and Muhammad al-Attas, married Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. He was the founder of Benevolence International Foundation, in the Philippines in 1988. During this period, Khalifa is believed to have received large donations of cash from outside the country, some of which, intelligence officials suspect, may have been funnelled to him by Al Qaeda. He also ran the International Relations and Information Centre, by which embezzled money was funneled to Ramzi Yousef. In 1993, his business cards were found in the Jersey City, New Jersey apartment that Yousef stayed in while he was involved with the World Trade Center bombing plot. Khalifa was first arrested on December 14, 1994 in Mountain View, California, placed in solitary confinement and the contents of his luggage were logged and edited. In 1995, Khalifa was arrested in San Francisco on charges of violating United States immigration laws. He was detained while the Justice Department tried but failed to gather enough information to charge him in connection with suspected terrorist activities. Eventually, he was deported on May 5, 1995 to Jordan, which had an outstanding warrant for him on charges stemming from the bombing of movie theatres in Amman in 1994, for which he had been under a possible death sentence, convicted in absentia. His convicton was later overturned, in a new trial during which he was acquitted. In 1996, Khalifa returned to Saudi Arabia, where he was again arrested after 9/11, but later released. He still lives in Saudi Arabia, where after 9/11 he publicly condemned Osama Bin Laden, and may now be retired from any related association to al-Qaeda.

Yeslam bin Ladin studied in the 1970s at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles; settled in Switzerland; became a Swiss citizen c. 2001; Geneva-based head of the family's European holding company, the Saudi Investment Company; was scrutinized by Swiss and American investigators because of a financial stake he has in a Swiss aviation firm; he has claimed to not have had contact with Osama since c. 1981^[10]

Abdullah bin Laden (born c. 1965); graduate of Harvard Law School; lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 9/11, the only relative to remain in the United States, staying in Boston for almost a month.

[edit] Third generation

Wafah Dufour (born Wafah bin Ladin on May 23, 1975 in Los Angeles, California) is an American model and aspiring singer-songwriter. She spent the early part of her life in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Dufour, her little sisters Najia (1978) and Noor (1987), her mother (1954) and her father (born on October 19, 1950) then moved to Geneva, Switzerland. In 1988, her parents separated. She earned a law diploma at Geneva Law School (Switzerland) and later a master's degree from Columbia Law School in the United States. She lived in Manhattan until around the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks, but was staying in Geneva for summer holiday at the time of the attacks. She currently lives in New York City and is working on her first album.

Abdallah Osama bin Laden (born c. 1976), son of Osama and Najwa; Reportedly organized the U.S. branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s with his brother Omar.^[11] Abdallah runs his own firm, called Fame Advertising, in Jeddah^[4]; he is closely watched by the Saudi government, which has restricted his travel from the kingdom since 1996; reportedly, he has never disowned his father.^[1]

Omar bin Laden; (born c 1981) son of Osama and Najwa; Omar accompanied Osama on his exile to Sudan from 1991-1996, and then to Afghanistan after that. Reportedly organized the U.S. branch of the World Congress of Muslim Youth in Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s with his brother Abdallah. He returned to Saudi Arabia after an apparent falling-out with his father over the September 11 attacks, which he saw as a strategic blunder that led to the fall of the Taliban. Omar runs his own company in jeddeh dealing in scrap metals. Omar married his now second wife Zaina Mohamed, who is half english recently, it is reported that their mutual love of horses and interest in photography brought them together, she is a devoted wife who is deaply in love with her new husband, Zaina is writing a book about her life, Omars life and the trials and tribulations since their marriage.

Saad bin Laden; son of Osama and Najwa; Saad accompanied Osama on his exile to Sudan from 1991-1996, and then to Afghanistan after that. He is believed to be married to a woman from Yemen. Saad reportedly arrived in Iran in 2002, from Afghanistan; He was believed to have been heavily responsible for the bombing of a Tunisian synagogue on April 11, 2002. He was then implicated in the May 12, 2003 suicide bombing in Riyadh, and the Morocco bombing four days later.

Muhammad bin Laden (born c. 1983), son of Osama and Najwa, married the daughter of the late al-Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef in January 2001, at Kandahar, Afghanistan, with footage broadcast by Al-Jazeera, where three of Osama's step-siblings and Osama's mother were in attendance.