A son of Osama bin Laden confirmed Sunday he had married a British woman
nearly twice his age, and voiced outrage at the publicity the wedding attracted.
Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother from Moulton, a village in
northwestern England, told The Associated Press last week that she met Omar bin
Laden, 27, while riding a horse near Egypt's Great Pyramid and that they married
on April 24.
The Times and Sun newspapers, which initially reported the story, said she
was in Egypt for medical treatment for multiple sclerosis at the time.
In a written statement published by the Saudi newspaper Al Wattan on Sunday,
Omar bin Laden said he was "stunned and outraged" by the publicity surrounding
his marriage to Felix-Browne, whom he identified as Zaina Bint Mohamad Al-Sabah.
Osama bin Laden's fourth son said his British bride was a Muslim and of
partly Kuwaiti descent. This could not independently be verified.
"Her nationality is not an issue," Omar bin Laden said in the statement.
"What is important is her religion and manner," the son of al-Qaida's chief
said.
Felix-Browne, a five-time divorcee, is a parish councilor in England with
three children by previous marriages and five grandchildren. She has confirmed
she held Islamic marriage ceremonies in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia with her
sixth husband.
She has said she was hoping to arrange a visa for her new husband to visit
Britain, but acknowledged it would be difficult because of his family name.
Bin Laden's son confirmed the British grandmother was his second wife --
Islam allows men to have up to four wives as long as they can treat them
equally.
"Yes, I am married to a Saudi woman from an honorable Arab family and I live
a happy life with her," he said in the statement. "She has agreed to my (second)
marriage," he said.
"Polygamy is not strange in our Arab and Islamic society," he said.
Citing an example from the life of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and his first
wife, Omar bin Laden said the age difference with his new spouse was not an
issue.
"The Prophet had married Khadija, the mother of the faithful, when he was
twenty and she was forty," he pointed out.
Felix-Browne said her husband, a scrap dealer and one of 18 brothers, was
raised in Sudan and Afghanistan after his father left Saudi Arabia.
She said the father and son last met in Afghanistan in 2000, the year before
the September 11 attacks on the United States and a subsequent U.S. bombing
campaign on Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban rulers who had harbored Osama
bin Laden.
She said Omar was training to be a soldier in Afghanistan at the age of 19,
when he left his father "because he wanted to see the world and didn't want to
fight and die young."
Osama bin Laden had moved from Saudi Arabia to Sudan during the 1990-91 Gulf
War, after failing to dissuade the Saudi government from turning to the U.S. for
military help. He was stripped of his Saudi citizenship after continuing to
criticize Riyadh's alliance to the U.S., and moved to Afghanistan after being
forced to leave Sudan in 1996.
（AP
