Bin Laden family
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The immensely wealthy bin Laden family (Arabic: ), also spelled bin Ladin, intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family, was thrown into media spotlight through the activities of Osama bin Laden. The bin Laden family own and operate a global corporation annually grossing 5 billion U.S. dollars, based upon the largest construction firm in the Islamic world, with offices in London and Geneva.
The family traces its origins in Saudi Arabia to Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden (died 1967), a native of the Chafeite (Sunni) Hadramaut coast in Yemen, who emigrated to Arabia before World War I. He came to Abdul Aziz ibn Saud's attention through construction projects and was 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.
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.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"].Business connections of the Bush and bin Laden families
Michael Moore's highly critical documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 alleges strong business connections between the Bush political 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 [link].On the morning of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, was [meeting]with Osama bin Laden's brother, Shafig bin Laden, in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Washington, on Carlyle Group business. Two days later, 13 bin Ladens were cleared by the [White House] to fly out of the United States when overseas flights were again cleared for departure. The New York Times reported that they 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.
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 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 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.
First generation
- Muhammed Awad bin Laden (born c. 1895 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 [Letter From Jedda, Young Osama, How he learned radicalism, and may have seen America], by Steve Coll, The New Yorker Fact, Issue of 2005-12-12, Posted 2005-12-05.
- Muhammad al-Attas Osama's stepfather, whose household Osama was raised in at Jeddah; worked at the bin Laden company. The couple had four children, Osama's three stepbrothers and one stepsister.
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.
- 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 Binladin 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; issued a statement denouncing his half brother Osama, with whom he claimed no contact since c. 1980
- 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.
Third generation
- Wafah Binladin (born c. 1975 in southern California), an American citizen, daughter of Yeslam and Carmen Binladin; was raised in Switzerland; graduate of Columbia Law School; internship at the New York law firm of Schulte Roth & Zabel; had lived in a rented loft in SoHo, New York City, was out of the country on 9/11
- Abdallah Osama bin Laden (born c. 1976), son of Osama and Najwa; brothers Omar and Abdallah reportedly organized the U.S. branch of the World Congress of Muslim Youth in Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s. Abdallah runs his own firm, called Fame Advertising, which has offices near a Starbucks in a two-story strip mall on the busy Palestine Street, in Jeddah; is closely watched by the Saudi government, which has restricted his travel from the kingdom since 1996; reportedly, he has never disowned his father.
- Omar bin Laden; son of Osama and Najwa; brothers Omar and Abdallah reportedly organized the U.S. branch of the World Congress of Muslim Youth in Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s.
- 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.
References
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