Osama bin Laden's son banned from returning to France over social media posts 'advocating terrorism'
Omar Bin Laden and his father Osama
Getty
The son of Osama Bin London has been told he will never return to France in an announcement by the French Interior Minister.
Omar Bin Laden, 43, lived in Normandy working as a landscape painter until French authorities withdrew his residency papers in October 2023 over social media posts made on the anniversary of his father’s death.
Now, the son of Al-Qaeda leader Osama has been told by French Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau that he won’t return “for any reason whatsoever”, in a message posted on X.
Retailleau said that the son of the architect of the 9/11 attack had “posted comments on his social networks in 2023 that advocated terrorism”.
Omar Bin Laden lived in Normandy
Getty
“As a result, the prefect of Orne issued an order to leave French territory,” he said. “The courts have confirmed the legality of this decision taken in the interests of national security”.
Bin Laden who married British National Jane Felix Browne - now Zaina Mohamad Al-Sabah - in 2006, had been residing in the town of Domefront-en-Poraie in Orne Prefecture since 2018.
He had applied to live in Britain with his spouse, a five-times divorced grandmother, in her hometown of Moulton, Cheshire, but was rejected by British Authorities in 2008.
He has denied being the author of “reprehensible comments” published on the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death in May 2023, which French officials say glorified “terrorism and al-Qaeda”, although Orne prefecture claims he did not delete or condemn them. The account, in the name of Omar Bin Laden has now been suspended.
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French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has banned Omar Bin Laden from entering France
ReutersRetailleau’s decision comes after he has pledged to bring “order” on immigration and “fight political Islam”. He has argued that the French legal system “is neither intangible nor sacrosanct”, and could be changed in order to keep the public safe.
Omar Bin Laden’s agent, Pascal Martin, said that neither he nor Bin Laden’s wife have had informed the painter of the decision, due to him suffering psychological illness. “He’s too fragile, if he finds out its going to hurt him a lot,” Martin said. “This decision is completely crazy, inconceivable”.
Describing Omar as a “victim of terrorism”, Martin claimed Bin Laden “has had a difficult life” as the son of the architect of the World Trade Center attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people on US soil on September 11, 2001.
“Being a son of Osama Bin Laden has been an ordeal for him”, he said. “He says that his life stopped on that day”.
Omar has a compex relationship with his father Osama, whom he lived with in Afghanistan, saying he he had a "kind heart"
GETTYBorn in Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden lived with his father until he was 19, having attended jihadist training camps in Afghanistan.
Believed to be the fourth-oldest of 24 children, he is the only one to have denounced his father publicly, saying that he did not want to be involved in the killing of civilians.
Nevertheless, he has complex feeling towards the Al-Qaeda leader, who was assassinated by US special operations forces in Pakistan in 2011.
He has described him as “kind” man, despite renouncing his acts of violence in a memoir in 2009, in which he details receiving physical abuse at the hands of his father.
He has also claimed that US special forces “violated” international law by denying him a proper burial, burying him at sea after taking his remains to a US base for identification.
He first came to prominence in the 2000s, doing interviews with Western Media. He even aspired to meet the Pope in Saint Peter’s, Rome, but said in an interview in 2008: “I have been told that is not easy”.