Osama bin Laden’s son says his father is still alive
Omar Bin Laden, the son of fugitive terrorist Osama Bin Laden, has said that he believes his father is still alive, although he does not know where he is.
15 Jul 2010
“My dad is on the Earth but I don’t know where. He’s still alive. If that sort of person dies, you could never make it a secret. The world changes if he dies,” he said in an interview.
Mr Bin Laden, 29, said he still loved his father, but he does not want to be like him.
“It’s a weak son who just wants to be like his daddy,” he told the Sun.
“I still love him - of course I do - he’s my father. That’s a normal human situation. I miss him as a father but we are different. I want peace.”
Mr Bin Laden also spoke about his love of American culture, saying that he enjoys Jim Carrey films, American football, rock music and even Laurel And Hardy.
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Osama Bin Laden’s son complained Tuesday that his father was summarily executed - if he’s really dead - and demanded proof from President Obama.
“We are not convinced on the available evidence in the absence of [a] dead body,” said Omar Bin Laden, 30, who said he was speaking for his many brothers.
The son, who long ago denounced his father’s murderous ways, said Obama was no better than the terrorist.
“As [I] condemned our father, we now condemn the President of the United States for ordering the execution of unarmed men and women,” Omar Bin Laden wrote.
The wife of one of Osama Bin Laden’s couriers was killed in the May first raid, along with two couriers; Osama, and Osama’s son Khalid.
Omar Bin Laden wrote in a statement to The New York Times that his father should have been given a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. He also griped that Osama’s body was dumped at sea and not returned to the family for burial.
“We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems,” he said.
He demanded answers in 30 days and threatened to go to an international court, saying he is putting together a panel of British lawyers.
Omar Bin Laden also demanded that Pakistan free his father’s three widows, who were detained after the raid.
Washington says Pakistan has promised to give the U.S. access to them, although Pakistani officials appeared to deny that Tuesday. The CIA is eager to question them, hoping to learn who was helping the terror mastermind.
Omar Bin Laden and his mother, Najwa Bin Laden, co-wrote a memoir, “Growing Up Bin Laden,” in 2009. They both left Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan just before 9/11.
The book provided information about the three detained widows’ lives. They are:
- Amal al-Sadah, 29, Bin Laden’s youngest wife, a Yemeni who married him in 2000. She was in bed with her husband when the SEALs burst in. She was shot in the leg.
- Khairiah Sabar, a Saudi Arabian who has a doctorate in Islamic law and was trained to educate children who can’t hear or speak. She married Bin Laden in 1985. They have a son, Hamza, 20, who may have escaped the compound.
- Siham Sabar, another Saudi, who married Bin Laden in 1987. They have four children, and she is called Um Khalid, or “mother of Khalid.”
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Exclusive: Osama Bin Laden’s Son Warns His Successors Will Be Worse
By LARA SETRAKIAN
DUBAI Feb. 11, 2010
Osama bin Laden’s son has a chilling warning for those who are hunting his father with drones, secret agents and missile strikes.
From Omar bin Laden’s up-close look at the next generation of mujahideen and al Qaeda training camps he says the worst may lie ahead, that if his father is killed America may face a broader and more violent enemy, with nothing to keep them in check.
“From what I knew of my father and the people around him I believe he is the most kind among them, because some are much, much worse,” Omar bin Laden, who was raised in the midst of his father’s fighters, told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “Their mentality wants to make more violence, to create more problems.”
Omar has turned his back on his father’s philosophy, a remarkable step for a man in an Arab culture where it is a sin to disobey his father and taboo to openly criticize him. It was doubly significant for Omar bin Laden because his father had picked him to succeed him as the leader of jihad.
The son spoke out again recently after hearing his father in an audio tape praise the attempt by the so-called “underwear bomber” to blow up a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.
“Attacking peaceful people is not being fair, it is unacceptable. If you have a problem with armies or governments you should fight those people. This is what I find unacceptable in my father’s way,” Omar told ABC News.
“My father should find some letter to send to all of these people, at least to tell them they shouldn’t attack the civilians,” he said.
Omar is a clearly conflicted peacenik, bearing some signs of a loyal son and trying to explain his father’s hatred. When asked whether there is anything his father likes about the United States, Omar says “their weapons,” and nothing else.
The son of Osama, however, had praise for the U.S. saying, “They don’t care what is your race, what is your skin, where you come from, this is very good.”
And despite the $25 million bounty on his father’s head and the ever-searching drones, Omar is confident that his father won’t be caught and that no Afghan will turn him in.
“It’s been 30 years now since he started fighting there. Who could catch him? No one…. This is the country that whoever gets in is stuck, be it the armies or the mujahideen,” he said.
Omar says even he does not know where his father is.
Osama Bin Laden’s Sons Are ‘Peaceful’
Although polls like the Pew Attitudes survey show steadily declining support for bin Laden in the Arab and Muslim world, Omar says he still hears vocal, if subtle endorsements.
“Nobody dares to say, ‘I follow your father’ in public. But I find it very often and everywhere, people say ‘We like your father. Your father is a hero.’”
What’s not clear is whether Osama bin Laden’s children follow him. Despite reports that some of Omar’s brothers fought and died in Afghanistan, Omar says the sons of Osama are “peaceful,” with no interest in their father’s war.
For years the whereabouts of his family were unknown, until headlines late last year suggested the family, minus Osama, had moved from Afghanistan to neighboring Iran. As Omar tells it, up to 40 members of the bin Laden family, wives and children, used fake identity documents to cross the border along with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the U.S. invasion. They now live in a comfortable Tehran compound, but under house arrest.
“The Iranian government has showed very good caring to my brothers and sisters. The only mistake is that until now they haven’t been released,” said Omar, describing an upper crust lifestyle: swimming pool, tennis court, shopping trips, and horseback riding along the coast. The children have had no access to formal education, and every foot they set outside the home must be chaperoned by Iranian security forces.
In November, Omar’s 17-year-old sister Imam escaped from Iranian custody and fled to the Saudi Embassy, where he says she is still living. Omar and Imam have spoken by phone, but Iran has so far refused to let her leave the country, and hasn’t responded to requests from Omar and his mother to see her and verify her identity. Her lack of official identification documents is one reason Iran has said it won’t give her an exit visa. One younger brother, Bakr bin Laden, was allowed to leave in December.
“[Iranian] President Ahmadinejad and his Minister of Foreign Affairs know they should do the right thing… they could release all of them if they wanted,” said Omar. Most are being held against their will, though Omar’s wife, Zaina Al Sabah, says seven or eight of them have said they want to stay in Iran.
Osama bin Laden raised his family of five wives (plus one marriage that was annulled) and more than a dozen children in a way meant to make them tough and ready for the rigors of war. He shunned air conditioning and refrigerators in the desert heat, banned toys and the kind of laughter that showed too many teeth, refused to wince when his men used Omar’s puppies as the victims in chemical weapons tests. He would cane his children for the slightest misbehavior, at times hitting them so hard the stick would break.
Osama Bin Laden Urged His Sons to Be Suicide Bombers
“He didn’t treat us differently than any of his followers. He just expected us to act like everyone else, because he was the leader,” said Omar. He and his brothers were given weapons training. In a breaking point between them, Osama encouraged them to sign up for suicide missions, volunteering to blow themselves up.
“We were shocked. Why would our father say something like this to us? After he went away we just talked about it and said this was never going to happen, this was not our way.” Omar found the rare and substantial nerve it took to talk back.
“I objected, and said why did you do this? What is the point? He didn’t respond. We were not more important than his big goal…and nothing would stop him from this.”
Today, Omar shrugs off the notion that his father had a cruel streak. He sees the spartan treatment as part of Osama’s worldview. In his book “Growing Up Bin Laden,” Omar notes the change in his father when he lands back in Afghanistan amid the violence of war and begins a rugged trip to a complex of barren caves in the Tora Bora mountains.
“I looked at my father. He did not seem to mind the trying conditions, but seemed exhilarated by them,” Omar wrote. He added with a grudging admiration, “No matter what, my father was a tough man.”
In Omar’s book, his father is infuriated with the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, arriving to protect against an attack by Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. (Omar says his father disliked the secular Saddam, and that there was “no contact, no connection” between the men.)
In August 1996 Bin Laden declared war on America from his Afghan cave, citing the fact that U.S. forces were still in the Persian Gulf.
His father’s pitch to the incoming mujahideen was different, focused on Arab discontent over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an issue with broader appeal. They came in droves, a new generation of men seeking jihad, or holy war, against the infidels of the West.
Omar describes how during meetings of mujahideen in Kandahar, leaders would play videos of perceived Israeli atrocities, the demolition of homes and the killing of civilians. Men would leave the meeting raging to fight. Between Israel and America, Osama saw America as an easier target.
“He thinks America is weaker than Israel. America is easier to get attacked, with its huge cities,” Omar said. “He sees America is the main power, but in fact is weak in certain ways.”
Omar believes most Al Qaeda fighters can be turned, and that efforts like terrorist rehabilitation programs in Saudi Arabia do work. The problem, as he sees it, is that their home countries are reluctant to take them back.
“The jihadis, as I know them, want to return to their country and they’re afraid because they know they are going to be killed or poisoned or imprisoned, so they stay with my father,” he said.
When Omar broke with his father and left Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, he sought to reclaim a life he never had. His family is trying to get access their inherited Bin Laden wealth, but Omar says the money is “stuck,” held by governments in Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
Omar says his dream in life is to reunite his family and succeed as a businessman. Being the son of Osama has made both a challenge, and left him expressing a deep discomfort.
“I am a peaceful man, but I don’t have peace,” he said.
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December 17, 2016 at 3:01 pm
Osama bin Laden’s son Omar was refused entry to Egypt today, airport sources said, giving no reason why his name was on a list of people banned from the country.
Omar, 34, Osama bin Laden’s fourth-eldest son, was traveling with his British wife Zaina Al-Sabah from Doha, and they asked to be sent to Turkey, the sources said.
The couple, who lived in Egypt for several months in 2007 and 2008, were previously denied entry to the country in 2008.
Omar bin Laden broke with his father in 2001 after living in Afghanistan for much of 1996 to 2001.
In an interview with Reuters in 2010, Omar said he was working with Saudi Arabia and Iran to end his separation from a group of brothers and sisters that dates back to the chaos in Afghanistan following the Al-Qaeda attacks of 11 September 2001.
Omar said bin Laden’s children were trying to be “good citizens of the world” but suffered from the lack of a father and the stigma of being the Al-Qaeda leader’s children. None were part of Al-Qaeda, he said at the time.
“We are working with the Iranian government and with the Saudi government at the moment to have my mother’s children and grandchildren join us,” he said.
Osama bin Laden was killed at his Pakistani hideout by US Navy SEALS in 2011 in a major blow to the militant group. His body was never seen, as the US military dumped it into the sea at an undisclosed location.
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Osama Bin Laden’s Son: Misunderstanding Behind Egypt’s Entry Denial
by Mohamed Hassan Shaban – Dec 18, 2016
Osama Bin Laden’s Son: Misunderstanding Behind Egypt’s Entry Denial
Cairo – Egyptian authorities have denied entry to the son of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a local security source said Saturday.
In exclusive comments to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, Omar bin Laden said that there might be a misunderstanding behind the Egyptian authorities’ decision.
“I don’t know the reason behind the Egyptian decision, but I am sure it is a misunderstanding”, Omar said.
Omar bin Laden, a businessman, had arrived at Cairo International Airport late Friday aboard EgyptAir flight from Qatar.
“He was barred from entry after his name was found on a list of people banned from entering the country,” the source said anonymously because he was unauthorized to speak to media.
According to the source, he was deported to Turkey aboard an Istanbul-bound flight.
Omar is Osama Bin Laden’s fourth son. He spent most of his time in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. He was one of the direct relatives of Osama to have strongly opposed his father’s actions.
Osama bin Laden was killed at his Pakistani hideout by U.S. commandos in 2011 in a major blow to the militant group, which carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
Osama bin Laden is believed to have around 20 sons from different marriages, according to Reuters.
Reuters also said that Omar has spent some years of his childhood in Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
In an interview with Reuters in 2010, Omar said he was working with Saudi Arabia and Iran to end his separation from a group of brothers and sisters that dates back to the chaos in Afghanistan following the al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Omar said bin Laden’s children were trying to be “good citizens of the world” but suffered from the lack of a father and the stigma of being the al Qaeda leader’s children. None were part of al Qaeda, he said at the time.
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Bin Laden’s son ‘was invited’ to White House by George W Bush
Omar bin Laden – son of the wanted terrorist – has claimed that he was asked to visit the White House in 2009 to help the US authorities track down his father.
Apr 6th 2011
ONE OF OSAMA bin Laden’s sons claims he was invited to the White House by George W Bush in January 2009 in order for him to help the US authorities track down his father.
Omar bin Laden, 29, told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia: “They invited me to accompany them to the White House, offered to defend, help and protect me, on the condition that I helped them find my father”.
Although Omar admitted that he has had no contact with his father for almost a decade, he refused the alleged request: “I told them I was sorry but it wasn’t something I could do. He is my father and I am his son, and as is the way the son must love and respect his father – even if in many cases a man may be against the ideas of his father.”
Omar has said that he denounced violence and left his father’s compound in Afghanistan before the 11 September attacks. He married a British woman in 2007 but the couple have since separated, reports the Telegraph.
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Osama bin Laden’s son seeks peace
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
JAN 19, 2008
Omar Osama bin Laden bears a striking resemblance to his notorious father — except for the dreadlocks that dangle halfway down his back. Then there’s the black leather biker jacket.
The 26-year-old does not renounce his father, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, but in an interview with The Associated Press, he said there is better way to defend Islam than militancy: Omar wants to be an “ambassador for peace” between Muslims and the West.
Omar — one of bin Laden’s 19 children — raised a tabloid storm last year when he married a 52-year-old British woman, Jane Felix-Browne, who took the name Zaina Alsabah. Now the couple say they want to be 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,” Omar told the AP last week at a cafe in a Cairo shopping mall.
Of course, many may have a hard time getting their mind around the idea of “bin Laden: peacenik.”
“Omar thinks he can be a negotiator,” said Alsabah, who is trying to bring her husband to Britain. “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.
There, Omar says he trained at an al-Qaida 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,” he said in English.
He suggested his father did not oppose his leaving — and Alsabah interjected that Omar was courageous in breaking away, but neither elaborated.
Although there is no way to confirm the details he describes of his childhood and upbringing, the strong family resemblance and Omar’s knowledge of Osama’s family life have convinced many of his lineage.
“Omar Bin Laden is the son of Osama bin Laden and his first wife, Najwa,” a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. The official confirmed Omar was raised in Sudan and Afghanistan after his father was forced out of Saudi Arabia.
Omar and his wife insist they have not been bothered by Egyptian officials, who said Thursday that the terror leader’s son did not pose a threat.
“He comes and goes just like any other tourist,” said a security official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “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,” Omar said. “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,” he said, 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,” he said.
Osama bin Laden, believed to be in hiding in the Pakistan-Afghan border region, offered a truce to Europe in a 2004 audiotape and a conditional truce to the United States in a 2006 message. In November, he called on European nations to pull out of Afghanistan in a message seen by some experts as an effort to reach out to Europe.
But in a series of messages since last fall, he also has been calling for Muslims to rally around jihad, or “holy war,” encouraging fighters in Iraq in particular to continue their battles with U.S. and Iraqi forces.
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.
But most of the al-Qaida leader’s children, like Omar, live as legitimate businessmen. The family as a whole disowned Osama in 1994 when Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship because of his militant activities.
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.
Since leaving his father’s side, Omar has lived in Saudi Arabia, where he runs a contracting company connected with the Binladen Group, but he spends much of his time in Egypt. It was during a desert horseback ride at the Pyramids of Giza that he met his wife.
Their marriage in April made them tabloid fodder, particularly in Britain, where headlines touted the “granny who married Osama bin Laden’s son.” Alsabah, who has married five times, has five grandchildren.
The couple has applied for a visa to Britain. And they are planning their endurance horse race across North Africa, which they hope to start in March. It is in the planning stages — they are seeking approval of governments along the route and need sponsors to help pay for the event and raise money for child victims of war.
Omar said they plan to ride 30 miles a day, with periodic weeklong rests in each country.
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.
Omar, however, said he isn’t worried.
“I heard the rally was stopped because of al-Qaida,” he said. “I don’t think they are going to stop me.
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Osama Bin Laden’s son, Omar, says dad is evil in new memoir
By JAMES GORDON MEEK
JUL 10, 2009
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S son Omar first realized the depth of his father’s evil when his beloved dogs were taken away and gassed in a chemical warfare experiment, he says in a new memoir.
Omar also confirms what U.S. officials have long believed - that his father was tipped off to a 1998 U.S. attempt to kill him.
He writes that Bin Laden got a secret communication and fled his Afghan camp two hours before cruise missiles struck it.
He does not identify the source of the tip, which the U.S. suspects was Pakistani intelligence.
Omar’s book, “Growing Up Bin Laden,” written with his mother, Najwa - the Al Qaeda leader’s first wife - describes the ultimate dysfunctional family.
The Bin Ladens lived austerely as their father staked his horrific claim as the world’s most wanted man. His son eventually concluded Bin Laden hated his enemies more than he loved his family.
Omar, 28, describes weeping as a teenager when told that Al Qaeda needed his pets to conduct chemical warfare tests.
“After I learned the truth about the puppies, I turned even further away from my father,” whose jihad led only to death, Omar writes in the book set for release by St. Martin’s Press later this year.
It has been widely reported that Bin Laden’s goons tested nerve agents at the Derunta camp in Afghanistan. In 2002, CNN obtained and showed video of dogs - fully grown - being gassed by visible toxic fumes.
Bin Laden’s fourth son admits he knew in advance of plots against targets like the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, where 224 perished.
He called the 9/11 attacks “horrific.” They occurred after he was told by his best friend - Al Qaeda operative Abu al-Haadi - that a “new mission” would be much bigger than the embassy bombings. Omar mourned al-Haadi’s death in the resulting U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
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Osama bin Laden’s son wants to work for UN
Omar bin Laden has said he wants to be in a “position to promote peace” and that working for the United Nations would be “ideal”.
Omar Bin Laden: Osama Bin Laden’s son wants to work for UN
By Ben Leach
In an interview with the New Statesman, the fourth eldest son of the world’s most wanted man said that he “passionately wants to try to stop violence”.
Asked whether he plans to enter politics or public life, Mr bin Laden said: “I do not believe that I would be a good politician – I have a habit of speaking the truth, even when it does not serve me well. But I would like to be in a position to promote peace. I believe that the United Nations would be ideal for me.”
He said he ended contact with his father in April 2001 but that he was once asked to take up arms at a meeting with his fighters.
“His sons were in attendance, although none of us was a fighter,” he said. “He spoke of how it is a great honour to give one’s life for Islam and said anyone who wanted to give their life should put their name on a paper in the mosque.
“He never asked me to join al-Qaeda, but he did tell me I was the son chosen to carry on his work. He was disappointed when I said I was not suited to that life. I do not like disagreement or violence.”
Omar Bin Laden also described his memory of the 11 September 2001 attacks in America that his father is said to have carried out.
“I had been sound asleep and was woken by my uncle yelling: ‘Look what your father has done!’,” he said.
“I went into the sitting area and my family were gathered around the television. I soon learned that America was under attack. It was a very sad day.”
“I did not agree with my uncle’s reaction. I never thought my father was capable of the carnage in America – it was too big for his small organization.
“I cannot speak for my father’s family. This topic is too painful for us to talk about. We were all so shocked by the suffering of those poor people that, after that morning, none of us ever had a conversation about it.”
Mr bin Laden’s experiences have been documented in a book Growing Up Bin Laden, Osama’s Wife and Son take us Inside their Secret World. He coauthored the book with his mother, Najwa, and best-selling writer Jean Sasson.
In the book, which was published last month by St Martin’s Press, he describes his childhood as “sad and lonely” because of his father’s “passion for supporting the Afghan people against the Russians”.
He added: “Although my father was stern and did not hesitate to use his cane, there were good times when he stopped his war plans and played with us.
“My father could be very kindly and he was very close to his mother. I remember his face glowing with happiness when he was with her.”
January 28, 2008
Omar, Son of Al-Qaeda Leader Osama Bin Laden: If My Father Is a Terrorist, Bush Is a Terrorist Too
Following are excerpts from an interview with Omar Bin Laden, son of Osama Bin Laden, which aired on Channel 1 Egyptian TV on January 28, 2008:
Omar Bin Laden: “There is no coercion in Islam.” Whoever wants to wage Jihad is welcome, and whoever does not want to – that’s fine too.
Interviewer: Do you consider this to be a real Jihad for the sake of Islam, which benefits the religion of Islam?
Omar Bin Laden: What exactly do you mean?
Interviewer: The Jihad you are talking about. Should the killing of civilians be considered Jihad?
Omar Bin Laden: The truth is that I condemn the killing or attacking of any civilian whatsoever – whether in the name of Allah or in the name of democracy. I condemn this, and so does Islam.
[…]
Terrorism exists all over the world. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that my father is a terrorist, then we must assume that Bush and Sharon are terrorists too.
Interviewer: I completely agree.
[…]
Omar Bin Laden: My father believes that these acts, especially in European countries… The truth is that he condemns any killing in Islamic countries.
[…]
Interviewer: You mean he does not want to kill Muslims.
Omar Bin Laden: He does not want to kill Muslims or even innocent [non-Muslims], but the things is that the politics…
Interviewer: He does not want this? Are you saying he was forced to do this? I don’t understand.
Omar Bin Laden: No, he even forbids these acts…
Interviewer: But he did this.
Omar Bin Laden: Where exactly did he do this? Tell me where, so I can explain the situation to you.
Interviewer: Do you think that Sheik Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have nothing to do with 9/11?
Omar Bin Laden: My father is connected to it, as he himself admitted. We heard it on the news. But I personally do not agree with the killing of civilians anywhere…
Interviewer: Omar, that’s your personal opinion, but Osama Bin Laden did these things.
Omar Bin Laden: But the question is why he did those things. You would like to know his perspective, wouldn’t you?
Interviewer: No, we know his perspective. He views this as Jihad for the sake of Allah, and so on. But you say that he forbids the killing of civilians.
Omar Bin Laden: Jihad does not command you to kill civilians, right? Omar Ibn Al-Khattab said: “Do not kill an old man, a woman, a child, a poet, or a monk in his monastery.”
Interviewer: So how do you explain this contradiction?
Omar Bin Laden: That’s the problem.
Interviewer: How do you explain this contradiction? You say that Sheik Osama Bin Laden believes that killing civilians is forbidden, according to the teachings of Islam, and according to the conduct of the Prophet Muhammad in all his wars – but he is doing the opposite.
Omar Bin Laden: That’s because he does not consider these people to be civilians. That’s his personal point of view.
Interviewer: What about you?
Omar Bin Laden: I do consider them to be civilians.
[…]
He offered them a truce. But they don’t want to recognize him to begin with, and so they cannot reach any truce or agreement with him. So why did they recognize Gerry Adams? They do have truces. They say that they are not willing to recognize terrorists, so why did they make a truce with Gerry Adams in South Ireland [sic]?
[…]
Why did he attack American civilians? Because in his opinion, it was the American people itself that elected the president and his policy – twice, no less – and they pay him taxes, and so on. Therefore, according to his personal perspective, the [Americans] support this oppressive policy.
