Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Son Speaks
By Andrew Lee Butters
Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009
For Omar Bin Laden, the fourth eldest of Osama bin Laden's 20 known children, the awful realization that his own father was a terrorist mastermind plotting a global conspiracy that would destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people and even his own family came gradually. Of course, there were warning signs: Omar's childhood was marked by regular beatings and survivalist training; there was the growing army of ruffians and retainers who called his father "Prince"; and then there was that Afghan mullah who had given his father an entire mountain in Tora Bora.
But as he recounts in a book co-written with his mother, Omar — now 28 years-old — found it hard to give up hope that a man who had killed so many people might one day turn his back on violence and become a normal father. The younger bin Laden fled Afghanistan only when it become clear that Osama was planning a massive attack on the United States; but he still couldn't accept that his father was responsible for 9/11 until months later when he heard the familiar voice on audiotape claiming credit for the attacks. "That was the moment to set aside the dream I had indulged, feverishly hoping the world was wrong and it was not my father who brought about that horrible day," he writes. "This knowledge drives me into the blackest hole."
*continued here: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932318,00.html