For Omar bin Laden, the fourth eldest of Osama bin Laden’s 20 known children, the awful realization that his father was a terrorist mastermind who was 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; the growing army of ruffians and retainers who called his father “Prince”; and 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 U.S., 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.”
As the first book written about Osama bin Laden with help from anyone in the bin Laden family, Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
