"He convinced him that the animal was a Jewish human turned into a monkey by the hand of God"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Osama's Prodigal Son
His father tested chemical weapons on his dogs, tried to turn him into a suicide bomber and groomed him to lead Al Qaeda. The dark, twisted journey of Omar bin Laden

GUY LAWSON

Posted Jan 20, 2010 2:11 PM

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31820385/osamas_prodigal_son/4

Events in Omar's childhood weren't marked by birthdays or family vacations — they were punctuated by embassy bombings and missile attacks and nights sleeping in the desert to prepare for Armageddon. Omar befriended the teenage sons of the men then plotting the first World Trade Center bombing, as well as the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, he recalls the time with fondness, relatively speaking. He and his brothers were sent to the best school in the country, until a bullet whistled through a window one day and the compound was besieged by gunmen attempting to assassinate his father. The attack only deepened bin Laden's commitment to jihad, as well as his paranoia and anger. When Omar's pet monkey was deliberately run over by one of Osama's men, Omar discovered his father had convinced the man that the animal was a Jewish human turned into a monkey "by the hand of God."

"In the eyes of this stupid man, he had killed a Jew!" Omar says in amazement.

In what Omar calls his father's "mad world," there was no way to know where peril lay. One day, one of Omar's closest friends was raped by a group of men. "The rapists added insult to the attack and injury by snapping photographs of the young man during and after the rape," Omar recounts in his memoir. When the photographs fell into the possession of Ayman Muhammad al-Zawahri, his father's top deputy, it was the equivalent of a death sentence. Zawahri — who in Omar's eyes was little more than a psychopath — concluded that the boy was homosexual. Despite pleadings from the boy's father, Omar's friend was dragged into a room with Zawahri, who shot him in the head.

[cali]

1. these people are sick fucks.

I feel for Omar. Good for him for being able to retain his humanity in the midst of madness.

[notadmblnd]

2. so how did he finally get away from his father?

I don't have the time to finish the article right now, but when did his father give him his freedom? does it give us a clue as to whether he is dead or alive?