Syria: Members Of Bin Laden Family Left For Qatar

While reports said Najwa Ghanem, the first wife of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden intends to buy a house nearby the house she has been leaving with her children in Syria, an Arabic newspaper reported Wednesday she left for Doha, Qatar a few months ago. So far, Ghanem was living in the city of Latakia on the Syrian coast.

Sources familiar with the case told al Quds al Arabi that bin Laden’s wife, her Filipino maid and Osama bin Laden’s three children (a female and two young men – Abdullah and Abdul-Qader) left the city of Latakia to Doha. Thus, none of the bin Laden family remained in Syria.

The leader of al Qaeda shot dead Sunday during an operation by U.S. forces on his headquarters near the Pakistani capital. According to a will dating back to 2001, about 3 months after the September 11 attacks in the United States of America, Bin Laden told his wives “not to get marry after him”, and told his children as “not to join al Qaeda”. According to Al Quds Al Arabi, Abdul Qadir bin Osama bin Laden practiced horse breeding as a hobby in Lattakia.

Najwa Ghanem, the first wife of Osama bin Laden lived in the Ziraa neighborhood of Lattakia, which is considered as an high-end neighborhood. She has given birth to nine children for bin Laden, according to people familiar with the case. Najwa Ghanem is a native of a village in the countryside of Lattakia and she married the leader of al Qaeda in 1974 at the age of 14 years.