Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Give me a fucking break…this guy is high.

Elusive al-Qaeda mastermind Osama-bin Laden may have terrorised the world, but his 26-year-old son Omar wants to launch a movement of peace. Omar also wants his father to give up violence and find another way to pursue his goals.

Omar, who last saw Osama in 2000 when he decided to leave al Qaeda, said that he did not think his father was a terrorist and was sure that he must have felt very sorry for the September 11 terror attacks.

In an interview to a US news channel, Omar, who works as a contractor, however, expressed apprehensions that his father “doesn’t have the power to stop the movement at this moment.”

Omar, who is the fourth of 11 children born to Osama’s first wife and one of the 19 children the al-Qaeda leader has fathered, said he is talking publicly because he wants an end to the violence his father has inspired, by launching a movement for peace.

“I try and say to my father: ‘Try to find another way to help or find your goal. This bomb, these weapons, it’s not good to use it for anybody, “he said.

He said that’s not just his own message, but one that even his father’s friends and other Muslims have expressed to him. “They too say … my father should change (his) way.”

He said he has no idea where his father is, but is confident he will never be caught because locals support him.

Omar, who has little in common with his father, grabbed headlines when he married a British national twice his age.

“Being Osama’s son, I don’t hide it. I don’t hide my name,” he said. “I am proud by my name, but if you have a name like mine you will find that people run away from you, they are afraid of you.”

Bash Note: Come to America and see how many people run away from you, pal. I guarantee you there will be a long line of people wanting to get in your presence. And they won’t be bearing gifts.

Omar said he doesn’t consider his father to be a terrorist. When his father was fighting the Soviets, Washington considered him a hero, he said. “Before they called it war; now they call it terrorism,” he said. He said his father believes it his duty is to protect Muslims from attack.

“He believes this is his job — to help the people,” he said. “I don’t think my father is a terrorist because history tells you he’s not.”

However, Omar bin Laden said he differs greatly with his father over the killing of civilians.

“I don’t think 9/11 was right personally, but it happened,” he said. “I don’t think … [the war] in Vietnam was right. I don’t think what’s going on in Palestine is right. I don’t think what’s going on in Iraq is right.”

He said he left al Qaeda because he did not want to be associated with killing civilians. He said his father did not try to dissuade him from leaving al Qaeda. “My father is a very kind man,” Omar told ABC. “And he very sorry when he does something like September 11.”

“He believes if he put two buildings down, maybe some people will die,” explained Omar. “But millions other will be saved. He believed that.”

Asked why he did not protest more strongly to his father’s role in the killing of civilians, he said it is up to the religious clerics close to his father to tell Osama bin Laden to change tactics in the name of Islam. And even if that most unlikely scenario were to occur, he said, al Qaeda would not stop. “My father doesn’t have the power to stop the movement at this moment.”

Omar and his wife Zaina are organising a major horserace through North Africa in the name of peace, set to kick off this year. But getting sponsors to line up behind the name bin Laden has been difficult. “It would probably have been easier to do a race without having Omar’s name, but then the race would just be a race, it wouldn’t be a race for peace,” his wife said.

Asked whether he would tell the Americans the whereabouts of his father if he found out exactly where his father is living, Omar said, “Actually, I would hide him, because he is my father.”

Asked if his father might be living along the Afghan-Pakistan border, he said, “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, the people there are different. They don’t care about the government.”

“I still love him, so much, with all my heart,” he said, adding “if you ask Bush’s daughter if she loves her father, sure she will love him.”

(Rediff)