Spain rejected on Wednesday a request by Osama bin Laden’s son Omar for political asylum, months after he was refused permission to live in England with his British wife, the government and the couple said.
The petition was turned down “on the grounds of insufficient evidence of danger or threat to his life,” Omar and his wife Zaina Alsabah bin Laden said in a statement, adding they had begun the process to appeal the decision.
“As you know, we are having a very difficult time finding a country who will accept Omar, only because of his family name. This is unfair. Omar is not his father,” the statement said.
The 28-year-old, who has urged his father to give up violence, had argued that his life was threatened in the Middle East because of his pacifist positions.
He made the asylum request on Monday immediately after he arrived at Madrid’s Barajas airport on an Egypt Air flight from Cairo, where he currently lives with his 52-year-old wife, formerly known as Jane Felix-Browne. The couple were married in 2006.
A Spanish interior ministry spokesman said the decision to turn down the asylum request met the rules of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
“He was notified of the decision early this afternoon,” he said.
In April British authorities turned down a request from Omar, a former scrap metal merchant, for a settlement visa.
At the time he said he wanted to live in England with Zaina at her home in the village of Moulton, near Northwich in Cheshire.
The British embassy in Cairo said it had based its decision on fears that his presence in the country would cause “considerable public concern.”
While he has condemned violent acts in several media interviews, Omar has been criticized for declining to directly condemn his father.
“Those who know the Arab culture understand that sons are not allowed to publicly attack their fathers. This is cultural. This does not mean that Omar agrees with his father’s activities. He does not,” the statement issued by Omar and his wife said.
“Only those who truly know the Arab culture will realize Omar’s bravery in taking a stance for peace against his father,” it said.
Saudi-born Omar is the fourth of 11 children born to his father’s first wife, and he is one of 19 children Osama bin Laden has fathered.
He made headlines in January when he urged his father to renounce violence in an interview broadcast on CNN.
In their statement, the couple stressed that their decision to leave Egypt “had nothing to do with any actions of the Egyptian government,” which they thanked for allowing Omar to live in Cairo.
“There were outsiders working within Egypt which created genuine concern for Omar’s safety. That is the only reason we left Egypt,” the statement said.
In 2004 Spain suffered one of Europe’s deadliest attacks when bombs planted by Islamic extremists inspired by al-Qaeda and angered by the country’s participation in the US-led invasion of Iraq exploded on packed commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS