Topic: Omar bin Laden

Omar bin Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden (Arabic: عمر بن أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎; born 1981) better known as Omar Osama bin Laden (also Omar Ossama bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Omar Awad bin Laden; rarely Omar Usama bin Laden, Omar Ossama ben Laden or Omar Ossama bin Ladin) is one of the sons of Osama bin Laden and his first wife and first cousin Najwa Ghanem, (see Bin Laden family). He is the fourth eldest son among nineteen children of Osama bin Laden. Older reports have described him and his brother Abdallah Osama bin Laden as nephews or cousins of Osama bin Laden.

Omar was born the grandson of Muhammed bin Awad bin Laden, the founder of what has been said to be the wealthiest non-royal family in Saudi Arabia, and the son of Osama bin Laden, whose partisan activities shaped his childhood. Omar accompanied Osama on his exile to Sudan from 1991-1996, and then to Afghanistan after that. He has said that he trained in al-Qaeda camps beginning at the age of 14, but after training with al-Qaeda for six years and sharing a house with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command, he left al-Qaeda in 2000 because he did not want to be associated with killing civilians and his father did not object. Reportedly he helped to organize the U.S. branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY, occasionally reported as the World Congress of Muslim Youth, formerly at 5134 Leesburg Pike, Alexandria VA) in Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s with his brother Abdallah and Kamal Helwabi or Kamal Helbawy, a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who now characterizes himself as a moderate. WAMY was criticized for disseminating "hate speech", employing persons calling for violence against Jews, and sued for damages by survivors of the September 11th attacks before being shut down in May 2004 in a federal raid in which all files and computer hard drives were seized. Anonymous sources have said that the Bush administration told FBI investigators to "'back off' when it came to investigating bin Laden's family", forcing an end to the investigation of WAMY, Abdallah, and Omar in 1996. Other national WAMY affiliates have been accused of acting as a Hamas front or have hosted Hamas speakers, and the 2004 raid was based in part on an affidavit citing ties with Hamas.

Omar's association with WAMY exposed him to FBI investigation beginning on September 19, 2001. Omar bin Laden and WAMY are named as represented by defense counsel Jones Day in a lawsuit filed by the family of John Patrick O'Neill, Sr., a victim of the September 11th attacks. Jones Day was one of 43 firms including the United States Attorney's Office and the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice acting as defendant's counsel.