Talk:Bin Laden family

untitled

I removed the bit about the policies of the family being secretive like all billionaire families. This seems meaningless to me. What families have 'policies' and if they do, how many are public? --Lee Hunter 16:37, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(This editor also removed a reference to the New York Times and some factual material. The 5 April 2005 edit should be carefully vetted. --Wetman 20:20, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC))

The reference to the New York Times was irrelevant and didn't change the content. As far as I can tell, everything I removed was either POV, speculation, or fanciful. For example, Victoria College in Alexandria was described as the "former educational bastion of the British Empire". I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean but the college wasn't founded until 1902, rather late to have a major role in the British Empire. --Lee Hunter 22:11, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Age of Najwa Ghanem

It says in this article that, "Osama bin Laden (b. 1957) married Najwa Ghanem (b. 1957)" It the article for Najwa Ghanem, it says that, "...when she was 14 and he was 17." One of them must be wrong. Erik E. (talk) 04:54, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Corrected asserted birthdate for Najwa Ghanem to c. 1960. Haven't found a good supporting cite, but there are plenty of sources supporting her age as 14 at the time of their 1974 marriage. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 06:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Bin laden : a movie star ?

I have been trying to find Bin laden's web videos for quite a while now, unsuccesfully. I dont know why it is so difficult to find them (maybe the us government is responsible for that ?). But in my opinion, one of the main goal of an encyclopedia is to show everything, even the worst things (like bin laden's ideas). If anyone has got a web adresse, it'd be really nice to put it here.

An interesting switch

An anon. User:70.32.84.133 attempted to substitute "an ultralight" for the plane crashed by Salem bin Laden in San Antonio, Texas 1988. He was in fact flying a BAC 1-11, a short-range jet airliner which had been bought in July 1977 by Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd (PBS "Frontline"). That plane's flight log had been a subject of some interest because the same plane was said to have been used in the summer of 1980 by negotiators in the so-called "October Surprise" . For a private interview in Madrid, an ultralight would be impractical for a London-Madrid hop; a BAC 1-11 ideal. A very interesting attempted switch. --Wetman 04:49, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

The article is this way again --- however, the first source I found [1] also said it was an ultralight. It also said he owned three more ultralights and a 707 jet. That jet may be the one you're talking about, and would be interesting to detail separately. Wnt (talk) 23:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The flight log

The following text was removed frm the article :

"The plane's flight log had been a subject of some interest because the same plane was said to have been used in the summer of 1980 by negotiators in the so-called "October Surprise" (an alleged conspiracy by Ronald Reagan's supporters to delay resolution of the Iran Hostage Crisis until after the US presidential election)." --Wetman 00:14, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

• The Frontline page at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/family.html was the only source for the claim that Salem bin Laden was killed while flying the BAC 1-11. That page has been revised by PBS to reflect that the plane in which bin Laden was killed was not a BAC 1-11. Therefore, I removed the above-quoted text relating to the BAC 1-11.Jbull 00:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Interesting Arabic

I've removed the following from this page:

اسامه بن لادن والجبان معتوه. وليس اراده الله لمقاتله الاميركيين. انها ليست ينفيديلس. ايران ايضا عدو ويجب ان يكون الهدف الحقيقي من الجهاد. وتسعي الولايات المتحده وغضب هاءل وتقديم راث الصادره في العالم العربي. الله اكبر

It was sandwiched between the first and second paragraphs. The curiousity of it struck me and the translation appears to be the following as per this Arabic translation site:

" Osama bin Laden and the coward one is insane . And he Allah wanted it to its fighter the Americans . It is not Ynfidils .Iran is also an enemy and the target should be the truth "

This is another translation... 'Osama bin Laden and cowardly moron. It is not God's will to fight the Americans. It's not Invidels. Iran is also the enemy and it must be the real objective of jihad. The United States, enormous anger and Rath newspapers in the Arab world. God is great, ' source - http://free-translation.imtranslator.net/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.172.242.61 (talk) 02:24, 3 October 2008 (UTC) Interesting eh?

Flight

Snopes says otherwise about the flight out of the us after 9-11[2]

Yes and this is many years after the 9/11 report. I found this after being amazed that somebody on the internet still was believing in this conspiracy theory. Wikipedia should do more to put this to rest.

First: Change "were allowed to leave" to "left". There is no evidence of a political connection allowing them to leave. The 9-11 comission states

"we found no evidence of political intervention. We found no evidence that anyone at the White House above the level of Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals. The issue came up in one of the many video teleconferences of the interagency group Clarke chaired, and Clarke said he approved of how the FBI was dealing with the matter when it came up for interagency discussion at his level. Clarke told us, "I asked the FBI, Dale Watson... to handle that, to check to see if that was all right with them, to see if they wanted access to any of these people, and to get back to me. And if they had no objections, it would be fine with me." Clarke added, "I have no recollection of clearing it with anybody at the White House."

Second: Added 9/11 Commissions conclusion that no flights took place before the opening of national airspace. We know full well whats going on here, and its a far and wide believed myth many people have due to this deception and play on words. Even Michael Moore's "Documentary" never came out and said that they were allowed to leave before the opening of national airspace, but he certainly alludes to it and its widely believed to be true even though there is zero factual evidence to support it.

Third: Added 9/11 Commissions conclusion the FBI did a satisfactory screening of before the departures.

Fourth: Remove unsubstantiated claims that the FBI did not perform a satisfactory screening, since 9/11 Commission reports the opposite these claims cannot be included along side the Commissions report unless a qualified citation is supplied. I shall include the claims below for archive if anyone does wish to research this further and include them. I think that is fair to the previous editor.

Fifth: The bit about the range of the airline and the distance between orlando and paris, including the nifty little map, is CLEARLY Original Research. Sorry, find a link and it will happily come back.

If there is any disagreement please outline in detail here, what exactly you disagree with in the 9/11 Commission's report? If there are follow-ups that disagree with the 9/11 commission I would happily see them included, but as it is now the current article cannot stand especially in absence of any supporting citations, and in light of 4 year old evidence only now being included.

Edits: Overall, FBI documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include details of the six flights between September 14 and September 24 that evacuated Saudi royals and bin Laden family members. The documents also contain brief interview summaries and occasional notes from intelligence analysts concerning the cursory screening performed prior to the departures. Only 4 of 100 passengers on three Saudi flights leaving Las Vegas between September 19 and September 24 were questioned by agents.[citation needed]

The documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies. On one document the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight (commonly referred to as the "Bin Laden Family Flight"). On another document, however, the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 of 22 passengers on the same flight.[citation needed]

Chudogg (talk) 03:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

User Chudogg wrote: "There is no evidence of a political connection allowing them to leave."

There is evidence; the commission simply did not look very hard for it. But that is beside the point.

User Chudogg wrote: "Added 9/11 Commissions conclusion that no flights took place before the opening of national airspace."

Airspace was opened on September 13th, incrementally, to commercial airliners. Restrictions on general aviation (including private flights) was lifted on September 15. This rule applied to everyone apart from wealthy Saudis nationals, who obtained permission to fly privately on the 13th, when U.S. citizens could not. The 9/11 commission knew this fact but decided not to disclose the information. [3] They simply state "we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13" without making a distinction between commercial and private flights. Perhaps it slipped their mind(s). Dynablaster (talk) 02:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Lowercase

I've invited WikiProject Saudi Arabia to comment on this issue. (It doesn't seem correct to have an issue of Arabic orthography in English resolved only by two English speakers.)

The article (when I came to it) has used {{lowercase}} since March 2006[4] and before that, {{wrongtitle}} since November 2004. Clearly the bin prefix to last names is uncapitalized in English except at the beginning of sentences (according to most style guides, anyway). The question is whether the lowercase template is intended for such cases or only for cases where a term is always uncapitalized. In this case, Trovatore believes that the template is misleading, whereas I see it as a helpful guide for editors and readers unfamiliar with Arabic naming. Trovatore has changed the template to a commented editorial note. Is this better or worse? Is the template inappropriate for this context (mabye an actual Arabic name template is needed)? Do readers need an in-article explanation? --Dhartung | Talk 10:07, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a very fair summary; thanks, Dhartung. I'd just like to add that my position is based on the WP stylistic choice that article titles are capitalized initially. A different choice would certainly have been possible; our entry at Dog could very plausibly have been rendered dog, but it isn't, and this is not because of "technical restrictions", but because this is the choice that was explicitly made.

Therefore, in my opinion, the rendering Bin Laden family is very natural for this article title, and there is no need to distract the reader with an unaesthetic, and IMO factually incorrect, warning. The point that seems to have been intended by the template is a different one, something like: "Look, you might think that because bin Laden is a proper name, you would always capitalize it, but this is not the case". My view is that that point does not merit a distracting warning at the top of the article. If it is felt to be sufficiently important, it can be treated in the text.

(What does merit such a warning? Primarily mathematical/scientific symbols that are actually incorrect when capitalized, such as e (mathematical constant). Secondarily, trademarks such as eBay, and proper names that their owners make a specific point of always lowercasing, such as bell hooks.). --Trovatore 21:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for inviting an Arabic speaker to contribute here. My suggestion would be to keep it capitalized as in Bin Ladin or Binladin. The use of bin in surnames is different from its use in names such as Muhammad bin Saud or Abdul Aziz bin Muhammad bin Saud , in which it actually denotes the meaning 'son of' and is always uncapitalized. In surnames, bin becomes part of the name (and doesn't just mean 'son of' anymore) and the choice of capitalization or not generally falls to the family. From what I have seen, the name we are concerned with here is generally spelled capitalized, as can be seen from several external links in the article, as well as in several news sources and locations on the net. From personal experience (which might or might not apply here), I know of other families with the bin prefix and they generally choose to spell it (Bin XXX). If you take a look here: list of companies in Saudi Arabia you can see examples of both. I hope this helps resolve the issue. --ReemaS 05:58, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that response, ReemaS. I agree now there is a difference between the Western-style family name and patronymic usages. I'm thinking we still need to explain, similar to why Osama is Usama to the FBI, how it's used in different contexts ... but that the template (as I argued above) is insufficient to communicate the complexity of usage. --Dhartung | Talk 07:06, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Alleged meeting

Although the article references propagandamatrix.com and a column written by Ed Vulliamy to support the claim of the meeting, this remains no more than an allegation, and I have edited the article to reflect this fact. Ordinary Person 03:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

It has been reported by major media, although most of the conspiracy sites get the timeline wrong (Bush Sr. was there on Sept. 10, but not Sept. 11). It's probably best to avoid using conspiracy sites as sources. -- Dhartung | Talk 05:32, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The Carter Connection

People make a big deal of the fact that George H.W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden's half-brother were at the same conference shortly before 9/11. What doesn't get nearly as much coverage is that the Bin Laden family donated large sums of money to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and if I'm not mistaken, also to Bill Clinton's library fund. Why does this not get any coverage? It's a much stronger connection than "Bin Laden's half-brother (one of his 60-odd siblings) was in the same place as the president's father!" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.50.151.8 (talk) 10:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

There is a picture on the web of Carter shaking hands with Yehia Bin Laden slightly prior to 9/11. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.76.250.16 (talk) 13:26, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/House-Of-Bin-Laden12sep02.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.76.250.16 (talk) 13:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Omar Awad bin Laden, Omar Osama bin Laden, Omar bin Laden

I recently started an article on Omar Osama bin Laden, and I believe the other two names are the same person. Many news articles currently say that Omar Osama is the son of Osama bin Laden, but I've also cited sources that say that Omar bin Laden or Omar Awad are nephews of bin Laden. However, all these articles agree he is the brother of Abdallah or Abdullah the founder of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (or the World Conference of Muslim Youth?) (some claim he too was involved though he was ~15 at the time). Does anyone have a good source to put all these lingering uncertainties to rest? Wnt (talk) 23:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Source for Bin Laden and brothers

Found this excellent source which lists all of the Bin Laden brothers. There is information on many of the bin Laden brothers but in German. I did not cite the source since I do not know how to do it. But I will list it here in case the info I provided is deleted because no source was cited. The source is from

http://www.arabischehalbinsel.de/Bin%20Laden%20Familie.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.76.250.16 (talk) 13:25, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Order of family tree

I corrected the formatting of the family tree somewhat, but the ordering of it, including the numbering is a bit wonky. Would it be a good idea to at least comment out the ordinal numbers out of the list, until the correct order can be ascertained? -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 13:44, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

House of Gossip Girl?

This has to be wrong. When was this added?? 68.33.32.197 (talk) 05:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)automaticdoor

i've seen this.. if vandalism survives the 'undo' process and it's not immediately obvious what it was changed from, it gets grandfathered into the article like a virus. creepy eh? but change it to House of bin Ladin, if you like. 64.252.201.28 (talk) 03:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Restored deleted info

I've restored the info that was deleted by User:Joshua Darkins (sockpuppet of User:JJGD). The following is the 4th paragraph counting from the bottom. House Of Bin Laden, by Jane Mayer....The family continues to have a stake, estimated by one source at about ten million dollars, in the Fremont Group, a private investment company, on whose board of directors sits another former Secretary of State, George Shultz. Much of the family's private banking is handled by Citigroup, which is chaired by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. The family has equity investments with Merrill Lynch and Goldman, Sachs. Among the family's business partners is General Electric. A spokesman for Jack Welch, the chairman of G.E., says that the family threw a party for him' in the nineteen-nineties in Saudi Arabia, and that Welch "considers them good business partners." One American diplomat says, "You talk about your global investors, it's them. They own part of Microsoft, Boeing, and who knows what else." Others note that the family has been awarded contracts to help rebuild American military installations, including the Khobar Towers, which were damaged in a terrorist attack that killed nineteen servicemen in 1996. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.73.0.104 (talk) 00:33, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Ha! They own "part of" Microsoft and Boeing?? These are publicly traded companies. Anyone can own a single share of either of these companies and be called a "part owner" so this is hardly meaningful information. In addition, the source is not a legitimate primary source. It's a second-hand reference: someone says that someone else says... At very least, the article should say that an article by Jane Mayer CLAIMS that an un-named American diplomat says these things. There's nothing wrong with pointing out that this family has legitimate global business dealings and significant investments in stocks, but the tone here is conspiratorial and non-factual. 216.80.110.88 (talk) 03:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable "secondary sources". I believe that the source used for the above information is a reliable secondary source. The American diplomat did not mention a "share holder" but a "part owner of the company". Americans diplomats would know what is a share holder and what is a part owner.--PosePetal (talk) 01:45, 15 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by PosePetal (talk • contribs)

What do the own?

CAn we get a better idea about what western companies they have a significant stake in? The intro. mentions Microsoft and Boeing, but what else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.139.148.16 (talk) 19:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

hello mr.osama i love you you are the best army bye bye —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.114.82.82 (talk) 19:58, 18 February 2010 (UTC)