Saad bin Laden

Born in 1979 in Jeddah, to the wealthy Bin Laden family. His paternal grandmother is a Syrian national called Hamida al-Attas.{{Cite magazine |url=https://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/12/051212fa_fact |title=Letter From Jedda: Young Osama- How he learned radicalism, and may have seen America|magazine=The New Yorker |last=Coll|first=Steve |date=December 12, 2005 |access-date=May 26, 2010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100117190909/http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/12/051212fa_fact |archive-date=January 17, 2010 }} An irrepressible chatterbox who sometimes blurted out intimate personal information, Saad was somewhat autistic, impulsive, unrestrained, anxious, easily confused, and thus completely unfit for clandestine action.Bin Laden, bin Laden, and Sasson, pp. 63, 180, 231; Cathy Scott-Clark & Adrian Levy, The Exile: The Stunning Inside Story of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Flight, New York: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 21, 100-101, 103, 324, 511. With all of Osama's other children, Saad accompanied Osama on his exile to Sudan from 1991 to 1996, and then to Afghanistan. In Sudan in 1998, he married Wafa', a Sudanese woman born of Yemeni parents.Bin Laden, bin Laden, and Sasson, 230-231, 234; Scott-Clark & Levy, 101.

In November 2001, Saad was sent away by his father with his father's three wives who were still with him and his younger children.Scott-Clark and Levy, 58. In March 2002, they made their way into Iran at Zabol. As stated by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, “As the oldest son present, Saad was nominally head of the Bin Laden family party, but given his mental issues his aunt, Osama’s wife Khairiah, took charge.”Scott-Clark and Levy, 148. Saad was erroneously blamed for the bombing of a Tunisian synagogue on April 11, 2002{{cite news|title=Bin Laden's son is rising in ranks of terrorism outfit|publisher=The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec)/Associated Press|date=30 July 2002}} and then implicated in the May 12, 2003, suicide bombing in Riyadh, and the Morocco bombing four days later,{{Citation |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082000980.html |title= Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in Al Qaeda |website= washingtonpost.com |author= Douglas Farah and Dana Priest}} all of which was impossible as he was neither personally able to order or command anything, and he was also held in Iran, mostly in prison-like conditions, for almost six and a half years, from March 2002 to August 2008.Nelly Lahoud, The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth About al-Qaeda, Its Leader and His Family, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022, p. 68.{{Cite web |url=http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370095 |title=Saad bin Laden: The Key to Iranian-al-Qaeda Detente? |access-date=18 July 2007 |archive-date=1 May 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080501000455/http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370095 |url-status=dead }}Zagorin, Adam and Klein, Joe. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20040720012152/http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,664967,00.html 9/11 Commission Finds Ties Between al-Qaeda and Iran]", Time Magazine, 16 July 2004. Retrieved 15 October 2006. Saad escaped from Iran in August 2008{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jan-17-fg-intel17-story.html |title=Osama bin Laden's son may be in Pakistan too |work= Los Angeles Times |author=Greg Miller |date=January 17, 2009 |access-date=June 4, 2012}} and fled to Pakistan, where he wandered haplessly for eleven months hoping to find his father, who, however, did not want him to come, for fear he would reveal his hiding place.Scott-Clark & Levy, 306, 321-326. He was able to communicate with his brother Khalid, but he was not invited to proceed to Abbottabad.

Saad was killed incidentally, without being specifically targeted, in a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan on 17 July 2009.Scott-Clark & Levy, 325-326, 331, 512. He was buried in an unmarked plot outside of Razmak, Pakistan.Scott-Clark & Levy, 326. While some uncertainty about his fate lingered for a time, letters retrieved from the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan confirmed that Saad was killed.{{cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/03/bin-laden-letter-worries-gaffes|title=Being Bin Laden: al-Qaida leader's banal jihad business revealed|work=The Guardian|author=Jason Burke|date=3 May 2012|access-date=27 August 2012}} Also, in September 2012, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri confirmed in a video message that Saad bin Laden was killed in a drone strike.{{Cite news|last=Flade|first=Florian|date=2012-09-26|title=Terror-Sprössling: Al-Qaida bestätigt Tod von Bin Ladens Sohn Saad|work=DIE WELT|url=https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article109486119/Al-Qaida-bestaetigt-Tod-von-Bin-Ladens-Sohn-Saad.html|access-date=2020-11-25}}

The main interest in Saad bin Laden has been in his alleged role as heir of his father Osama bin Laden in the latter's leadership of al-Qa'ida and its violent actions. This was specifically alleged by US intelligence sources,{{cite news|last1=Farah|first1=Douglas|last2=Priest|first2=Dana|date=20 July 2007|title=Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in Al Qaeda|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082000980.html|access-date=16 September 2012}} and recently has continued to be promoted by the scholar Nelly Lahoud.Lahoud, 240, 266. However, the revelations of the books Growing Up bin Laden and The Exile, both cited above, show that, even though Osama was hoping to promote one of his sons to succeed him, he never contemplated Saad for such a role because of Saad's mental and behavioral unfitness for it. Rather, at first he favored his eldest son Abdullah until Abdullah abandoned his father and his projects in 1995, moving back to Jiddah,Bin Laden, bin Laden, and Sasson, 122. then switched his hopes immediately to his fourth son Omar,Bin Laden, bin Laden, and Sasson, 136-137, 139-144, 215-217, 242. skipping his second and third sons Abd al-Rahman and Saad because of their mental, emotional, and behavioral unfitness. Omar turned decisively against Osama's projects by 1998-1999, and Osama then began to invest his hopes in his sixth son Muhammad,Bin Laden, bin Laden, and Sasson, 215, 296. who alone accompanied him in his flight into 2003, but then was dismissed by him to Iran later in that same year. After that, Osama seems to have abandoned any hopes in his sons, as he even urged Hamza to try to do study traditional Islamic knowledge rather that be a fighter,Lahoud, 264-266. and while he exploited Khalid with him in his hideaway, he gave him no independent responsibilities at all, relying more on his daughters and wives.

• Bin Laden family
• Special Activities Division

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{{Osama bin Laden}}

{{Al-Qaeda}}

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Category:1979 births

Category:2009 deaths

Category:Assassinated al-Qaeda leaders

Category:Al-Qaeda leaders

Saad

Category:Deaths by drone strikes of the Central Intelligence Agency in Pakistan

Category:Fugitives

Category:Saudi Arabian al-Qaeda members

Category:Saudi Arabian people of Syrian descent

Category:Saudi Arabian people of Yemeni descent

Category:Saudi Arabian expatriates in Pakistan