Bin Laden Son Wants To Be Peace Advocate
By Mar Celo on Jan 18, 2008 in Arabic News | | |
Omar Osama bin Laden the son of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden sat down with The Associated Press and did an interview where he talked about his father and revealed that he wants to be an “ambassador for peace” between Muslims and the West.
Omar is 26-year-old and looks a bit like Osama except for the dreadlocks and the black leather biker jacket.
He is one of bin Laden’s 19 children and was in all the tabloids when he married a 52-year-old British woman, Jane Felix-Browne, who took the name Zaina Alsabah in 2007.
The couple say they want to be peace advocates, planning a 3,000-mile horse race across North Africa to draw attention to the cause of peace:
“It’s about changing the ideas of the Western mind. A lot of people think Arabs — especially the bin Ladens, especially the sons of Osama — are all terrorists. This is not the truth,”
Alsabah, who is trying to bring her husband to Britain added:
“Omar thinks he can be a negotiator,” “He’s one of the only people who can do this in the world.”
Omar lived with the al-Qaida leader in Sudan, then moved with him to Afghanistan in 1996 where he trained at the camp but in 2000 he decided there must be another way and he left his father, returning to his homeland of Saudi Arabia.
“I don’t want to be in that situation to just fight. I like to find another way and this other way may be like we do now, talking,”
Omar and his wife insist they have not been bothered by Egyptian officials, who said that the terror leader’s son did not pose a threat:
A security official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said:
“He comes and goes just like any other tourist,” “He is taking a line that is totally different from him father.”
Omar said he hasn’t seen or been in contact with his father since leaving Afghanistan:
“He doesn’t have e-mail,” “He doesn’t take a telephone … if he had something like this, they will find him through satellites.”
Omar doesn’t criticize his father and says Osama bin Laden is just trying to defend the Islamic world.
“My father thinks he will be good for defending the Arab people and stop anyone from hurting the Arab or Muslim people any place in the world,” noting that the West didn’t have a problem with his father when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Omar is convinced a truce between the West and al-Qaida is possible:
“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,” .
Teams from around the world will be encouraged to join in what the couple envisions as an equine version of the Paris-Dakar car rally. That rally was canceled this year due to fears over terrorist threats made by al-Qaida-affiliated groups in North Africa.
“I heard the rally was stopped because of al-Qaida,” “I don’t think they are going to stop me.”
At least two of Osama bin Laden’s sons, Hamza and Saad, are believed to have an active role in al-Qaida — with Hamza believed to be in the Pakistan-Afghan border zone and Saad thought to be in Iran, perhaps in Iranian custody.
The family is wealthy: Osama bin Laden’s billionaire father Mohammed, who died in 1967, had more than 50 children and founded the Binladen Group, a construction conglomerate that gets many major building contracts in the kingdom.
