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Wife of bin Laden's son says their lives in danger

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-08 10:48

MADRID - The British wife of Osama bin Laden's son Omar said on Friday the couple feared they might be killed because of his denunciation of the views of his father, the leader of al Qaeda.

"Spain is our only chance of surviving, our only chance of living," Zaina al Sabah, previously known as Jane Felix-Browne, told Reuters in an interview.

Omar bin Laden, 27, is appealing against the Spanish government's decision to refuse his request for asylum. He is being held at Madrid airport while authorities rule on the case.

His wife Zaina al Sabah, 52, said the couple were in danger from extremists in the Arab world since he had spoken out against Islamic fundamentalism and had married a British woman without the permission of the Saudi government.

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"He's denounced 100 percent what his father does. The reason for his problems is that he stands up and asks for peace," she said.

She said her husband, one of Osama bin Laden's 19 sons, had stopped living with his father before he masterminded the September 11 attacks on the United States seven years ago and made it clear to him he did not support violence.

She said they decided to fly to Madrid on a Morocco-bound flight on Monday after Egypt refused to renew Omar's visa. The couple married after meeting in Egypt in 2006.

"I reckon within two days we would have been killed or arrested or Omar would have been deported to Saudi Arabia where he would either have been killed or imprisoned," she said.

Spain's Interior Ministry has said it turned down Omar's application because it did not consider he faced persecution in Egypt.

Zaina said they had been receiving death threats via the Internet, and warnings their lives were in danger, for the past year-and-a-half.

"We had been married for six months and I was told by some of his relatives that we would be killed," she said. "I was then told by a number of high-ranking princes in Saudi Arabia that we had a very good chance of being killed."

She added: "Omar is a democrat. Omar is a pacificist. Omar believes in speaking rather than bombs. He has spent the past year-and-a-half talking about peace, saying that bombs are wrong, trying to encourage the youth, the Islamic youth, to stop following this horrendous, violent path."