Steve Coll - The Bin Ladens

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in 2008 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Steve Coll, 2008

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Coll, Steve.

The Bin Ladens: an Arabian family in the American century/Steve Coll.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 1-4362-0389-9

1. Bin Laden family. 2. Saudi Arabia—History—20th century. I. Title.

CS1129.B552 2008 2007042748

953.805'2—dc22

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Decades later, Osama Bin Laden recruited Khalid Al-Mihdhar, a member of this well-known Wadi Doan family of sayyids, or descendants of the Prophet Mohamed, as a hijacker in the September 11 plot; Al-Mihdhar piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Shafiq Bin Laden was attending an investors conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., when the attack launched by his half-brother struck the Pentagon.

Five of the hijackers who crashed planes into American targets on September 11, who were recruited by Osama Bin Laden, came from Asir. There is a striking symmetry in these air crashes involving Americans and Asiris, which took place during two Septembers thirty-four years apart.