Every youngster finds it challenging to grow up under the pressure of parental expectations, but few can say they have dealt with it more severely than Omar bin Laden.
That is because his father, Osama, who was the founder of Al Qaeda, nurtured the son to succeed him as the ruler of his tyrannical kingdom. That included beatings, survival training in the desert, and the horrifying knowledge that his beloved pups had been used to test chemical weapons.
The fourth son of Osama, Omar, is now 41 years old and an artist living in Normandy with his British wife, Jane Felix-Browne, now known as Zaina bin Laden. They have plans to rent vacation homes there.
Omar reveals that he attempted to enter the country two years ago but was turned away at the border, and the pair want to relocate to the UK to be nearer to Zaina’s relatives. He is presently requesting a visa after previously been denied one on many occasions.
Omar remembered arriving in the UK by ship two years ago and landing in Portsmouth when speaking to The Sun from Qatar, where he had traveled to witness the World Cup hosts play The Netherlands on Tuesday.
The border guards escorted us to the interrogation room right soon after I set foot on English land, he said, and questioned us there for many hours.
But they were quite kind and considerate.
Omar and Zaina returned to France where they are presently refurbishing apartments in a 500-year-old apartment building and want to launch a restaurant after being refused admission due to a problem with his documentation.
However, he has filed for a visa and continues to have ambitions of visiting the UK in the future.
The most recent post on his TikTok profile, which has only 14 followers, is an homage to the late Queen, whom he referred to as “the Queen of the universe.”
The pair is now supported by the sale of Omar’s paintings, which each bring approximately £8,500. Mountains are his favorite topic because, in his words, they make him feel comfortable and at home.
Omar was born in Saudi Arabia in 1981 to Osama’s first wife, Najwa, and raised there in a very affluent environment surrounded by the accoutrements of the Saudi Bin Laden Group, at the time one of the largest construction companies in the nation.
He also faced frequent beatings from his strict father, who at this time was actively engaged in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union and well on his way to becoming an outspoken jihadist.
The family was relocated to Sudan after being exiled from Saudi Arabia in 1991 as a result of Bin Laden’s criticism of the royal family for permitting US soldiers to be stationed there.
The family underwent rigorous survival training there after being driven into the middle of the desert by Osama and had to go for days at a time without food or water while camped out in holes in the ground.
Even though Omar and his siblings all had asthma, everything American was absolutely forbidden, including air conditioners and inhalers.
Then, when he was 15 years old, Omar was chosen by his father to go to Afghanistan and live with him in a camp run by Al Qaeda in the Tora Bora mountains, where he would start his training to become a future terrorist commander.
Here, he picked up shooting skills and, at the age of 17, learnt that his beloved dogs were being used to test chemical weapons after hearing combatants explain in great detail how the animals had been gassed and suffered agonizing deaths.
Following the 1998 US embassy bombings and hearing that something much worse was “in the works,” he started planning his escape from his father’s cause and the bloodshed that surrounded him.
When Osama urged his kids to register as suicide bombers, it was the breaking point.
In a prior interview with the Daily Mail, Omar stated: “My father hated his enemies more than he loved his sons.
At that point, I realized it would be foolish of me to squander another second of my life.
Five months before the 9/11 terrorist assault, in April 2001, Omar finally escaped Afghanistan, making his father the most wanted man in the world.
Between the day he escaped and the day his father was murdered by a US hit team at a facility in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011, he said the two never talked.
Omar said, “I don’t know, maybe because I was more clever, which is why I’m still here today,” when asked why he believes Osama picked him as his successor.
He first met Zaina in Egypt in 2006, and the two soon got married. Zaina has been married six times, has three children, and is now a great-grandmother.
In 2010, they attempted to become parents via IVF and a surrogate, but the Bristol-based Bristol PA who agreed to carry the children miscarried at ten weeks.
Around the same time, there were rumors of a breakup in the couple’s relationship because Omar allegedly started hearing his father’s voice in his brain.
However, Omar started going to therapists and was given medicine to help control his bipolar disease, and now he and his partner seem content.
Omar’s bond with his father and the strain of coming to grips with the atrocities he did, according to Zaina, are to blame for his problems.
In a prior interview, she said that “no one else is accountable for this.” Omar simultaneously loves and despises Osama.
Because he is his father, he loves him, yet he despises what he has done. After 9/11, I believe he had post-traumatic stress disorder.
Omar’s life was wrecked by learning what his father had done.