How many bin laden wives

The recent fall—or at least the economic punishment—of the bin Laden family has coincided with the rise to power of M. It is a story of privilege, succession, and wildly diverse outlooks within a family whose name is an indelible part of American history.

He left behind fifty-four children, whom he had fathered by more than twenty wives. Although hardly prepared for his new responsibilities, Salem took charge of the family and its businesses in the manner of a sheikh, and ran it as his fiefdom. Fahd effectively controlled contracts that were important to the Saudi Binladin Group, and Salem became part of his court.

In the nineteen-eighties, Salem visited Osama, his younger half brother, in Pakistan, where he had joined the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But, in , Salem died in a freak ultralight accident outside San Antonio. He was forty-two. He seemed to believe that he was qualified to run the family after Salem. He was the only child of a teen-age girl whom his father had married and divorced hastily in the late nineteen-fifties.

Under the Bush administration, the US invaded Iraq in under the false premise that Saddam Hussein was actively developing weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration also sought to justify the invasion based on the baseless notion that Hussein was working with al Qaeda. President George W. Al Qaeda and ISIS, a terror organization that was in many ways born out of the Iraq invasion, "remain the greatest Sunni terrorist threats to US interests overseas," according to the version of the US intelligence community's annual threat assessment.

For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. A snub-nosed Kalashnikov, a memento from his days fighting Russian invaders in Afghanistan, rested on a shelf above the door. Yellow flowered curtains screened the room from curious eyes, and the walls were filled with hundreds of tapes audio and video carefully organized in rows. Eventually he rebelled against indoor confinement, sending his son Khalid to buy him a hat with a wide brim, like a cowboy hat, that would mask his features if he went outside late in the day.

Khalid also oversaw the construction of a gazebo and trellises that would prevent a satellite from obtaining a clear image of his face or physique. The al-Kuwaiti brothers disguised how many people lived in the compound by ensuring that no fewer than four separate electric meters were installed. Even as the Americans prepared to launch their attack on the compound, relationships were breaking down inside its walls. Exhausted by meeting the needs of a fluctuating but steadily expanding number of confined bin Laden family members and those of their own growing families, the al-Kuwaiti brothers gave the al Qaeda chief an ultimatum.

Before the conflict was fully resolved and a new routine established, SEAL team six arrived by helicopter the night of May 2, , and Osama, the al-Kuwaiti brothers and some of their family members were dead. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Our family abroad all came back to Saudi. They tried as much as they could to maintain control over the family.

Nearly two decades on, the Bin Ladens can move relatively freely within and outside the kingdom. In , Abdul Wahhab had made a pact with the then ruler Mohammed bin Saud, allowing his family to run affairs of state while hardline clerics defined the national character.

The modern day kingdom, proclaimed in , left both sides — the clerics and the rulers — too powerful to take the other on, locking the state and its citizens into a society defined by arch-conservative views: the strict segregation of non-related men and women; uncompromising gender roles; an intolerance of other faiths; and an unfailing adherence to doctrinal teachings, all rubber-stamped by the House of Saud.

Many believe this alliance directly contributed to the rise of global terrorism. This he sees as essential to the survival of a state where a large, restless and often disaffected young population has, for nearly four decades, had little access to entertainment, a social life or individual freedoms. There have been changes to the labour markets and a bloated public sector; cinemas have opened, and an anti-corruption drive launched across the private sector and some quarters of government.

The government also claims to have stopped all funding to Wahhabi institutions outside the kingdom, which had been supported with missionary zeal for nearly four decades. Contradictions abound: some officials and institutions eschew conservatism, while others wholeheartedly embrace it. Meanwhile, political freedoms remain off-limits; power has become more centralised and dissent is routinely crushed. An erudite man now in his mids, Turki wears green cufflinks bearing the Saudi flag on the sleeves of his thobe.

Before, he was very much an idealistic mujahid. He was not a fighter. By his own admission, he fainted during a battle, and when he woke up, the Soviet assault on his position had been defeated. As Bin Laden moved from Afghanistan to Sudan, and as his links to Saudi Arabia soured, it was Turki who spoke with him on behalf of the kingdom. Then — and 17 years later — relatives of some of the 2, killed and more than 6, wounded in New York and Washington DC refuse to believe that a country that had exported such an arch-conservative form of the faith could have nothing to do with the consequences.

Certainly, Bin Laden travelled to Afghanistan with the knowledge and backing of the Saudi state, which opposed the Soviet occupation; along with America, the Saudis armed and supported those groups who fought it. The young mujahid had taken a small part of the family fortune with him, which he used to buy influence.

When he returned to Jeddah, emboldened by battle and the Soviet defeat, he was a different man, Turki says. He wanted to evict the communists and South Yemeni Marxists from Yemen. I received him, and told him it was better that he did not get involved.