Family Ties

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I worte a few days ago: For the US government to really stop the funding
of bin Laden, it may have to
ban oil trading altogether!  If one studies the funding of the Iran-Iraq
war, one would see that the oil sector played a intricate and intrinsic
role.  I would not be surprised that some the bin Laden's money trail
leads to Texas and the majors .

>From The Daily Mail (UK)

Bin Ladens family link to Bush
by PETER ALLEN, Daily Mail

In summer 1971, Osama and Salem Bin Laden enjoyed a holiday in Sweden
with some of their 55 brothers and sisters.
Yet within a few years, the two teenagers lives had taken stunningly
different turns.
As the world knows to its cost, Osama embraced Islamic fundamentalism
and 30 years later was named the worlds most wanted man. He is prime
suspect in the murder of nearly 7,000 in the worst ever terrorist
atrocities in the U.S. earlier this month.

Incredibly, Salem went on to become a business partner of the man who is
leading the hunt for his brother. In the 1970s, he and George W Bush
were founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr Bushs home state
of Texas.
Photos reveal the brothers on family holiday to the Swedish town of
Falun, 150 miles north-west of Stockholm, when Osama was 14 and Salem
around 19. The brothers had recently inherited a fortune from their
construction magnate father, Mohammed. He left millions to each of his
57 children by 12 wives after dying in a plane crash in 1968.

Osama and Salem first visited Falun in 1970, arriving in a blue
Rolls-Royce flown to Copenhagen by private jet. They liked the town so
much they returned with other family members a year later.

Learning that the Bin Ladens, originally from Saudi Arabia, were staying
at the Astoria Hotel, a local photographer asked the unusual visitors to
pose. Astoria owner Christina Akerblad said last night:

They were beautiful boys, so elegantly dressed. Everybody loved them.
Osama played with my two boys, Anders and Gerk. Whats happened since is
absolutely terrible. The first time I realised  Osama had turned into a
terrorist was when I saw his photograph in a magazine article about the
bombing. He and his brother were such nice boys.

At that time the brothers both delighted in their enormous wealth. Salem
- wearing a polo neck and slacks as he crouches three places from Osama,
in jeans and a skinny rib jumper - put a large part of his money into
business ventures, including Arbusto Energy.

Mr Bush was not long out of Harvard Business School when he started the
company in 1978.

Salem watched it grow into a hugely successful business until his death
in a microlight plane crash in Texas in 1983.

As he built his own business empire, Salem Bin Laden had an intriguing
relationship with the president-to-be.

In 1978, he appointed James Bath, a close friend of Mr Bush who served
with him in the Air National Guard, as his representative in Houston,
Texas.
It was in that year that Mr Bath invested $50,000 (about o34,000) in Mr
Bushs company, Arbusto. It was never revealed whether he was investing
his own money or somebody elses.

There was even speculation that the money might have been from Salem. In
the same year, Mr Bath bought Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of the
Saudi Arabian multimillionaire. Three years ago, Mr Bush said the
$50,000 investment in Arbusto was the only financial dealing he had with
Mr Bath.

Last night a White House spokesman was unavailable for comment.

Before his death, Salem was married to Briton Caroline Carey, now 35.
She has never spoken about her brother-in-law Osama, who was disowned by
the rest of his family in 1991 when he was expelled from Saudi Arabia
for his anti-government activities.

Now living in luxury in a Cairo villa, she has married twice into the
Bin Laden family - first to Salem, and now to a younger brother, Khaled.
She has a daughter by each brother.

Three years ago a family friend said: She first met Salem when she was
just achild - no more than five years old.

He was a friend of the family but at that stage no one would have
dreamed  that they would end up marrying.

When they met again as adults, Caroline was 20 and Salem twice her age.
Salem was the head of the Bin Laden family as the oldest of all the
brothers and sisters.

He was a man with a powerful presence.

They married and, after his death, Caroline decided to bring up her
daughter in Saudi Arabia.

Caroline was a widow for nearly ten years before deciding to marry
Khaled, said the friend. He is one of the younger brothers and very
quiet and loving. She can never speak publicly about her marriage, or
anything else for that matter, or she would be cut off from the family.

Carolines father, a retired psychology lecturer from Hampstead, said: My
daughter is very happy with Khaled. She decided to stay on in Saudi
Arabia because she found her family there to be so loving and
supportive.

Yesterday FBI agents swooped on a Boston suburb where around 20 of the
wealthy relatives of Bin Laden live. They questioned them at a
condominium complex in Charlestown. Agents even began visiting
nightclubs to collect credit cards of younger members of the family.

Bin Ladens younger brother Mohammed, who is said to have moved back to
Saudi Arabia with his wife and children several years ago, owns a
ten-bedroom mansion in nearby Wayland.
Another younger brother, Abdullah, is a 1994 graduate of Harvard Law
School.
The family has given it o2million in endowments to research Islamic law.
Most of Bin Ladens family have in the past strongly denounced the
44-year-old fugitive, now living in Afghanistan.
The FBI in Boston has long been aware of his extended family and began
monitoring their activities after the 1998 terrorist bombings of U.S.
embassies in Africa.

The Bin Ladens still run one of the biggest construction companies in
the world.