Bin Laden's Sister - In - Law Gives Rare Look
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 10, 2004
Filed at 1:02 p.m. ET
GENEVA (AP) -- The only family member to talk openly about Osama bin Laden describes him as pious and merciless, a man so driven by his beliefs that he once denied a water bottle to his own infant son in the heat of the Saudi desert.
Carmen Binladin, the terrorist leader's sister-in-law, says bin Laden's religious conviction was so admired by his family that she refuses to believe his relatives have stopped supporting him, as they claim.
In a new book and during an extensive interview with The Associated Press, she said a turning point in her life was a bin Laden family gathering in Taef, Saudi Arabia, one sweltering day in the mid-1970s.
Bin Laden's son began crying for water, she said, but the elder bin Laden refused to allow the baby to be given a water bottle, saying the boy should be fed water with a spoon because of Muslim teachings.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Osamas-Sister-in-Law.html