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The immensely rich bin Laden family, intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family were thrown into unexpected prominence through the public actions of Osama bin Laden. The family's internal policies are generally extremely secretive, like those of all multi-billionaire dynasties.
The family traces its origins in Saudi Arabia to Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden (died 1968), a native of the Chafeite (Sunni) Hadramaut coast in Yemen, who emigrated to Arabia before World War I. He came to Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud's attention through construction projects and was awarded contracts for major renovations at Mecca, where he made his initial fortune from exclusive rights to all mosque and other religious building construction not only in Saudi Arabia, but as far as Ibn Saud's influence reached. Until his death Mohammed bin Laden had exclusive control over restorations at Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Soon the bin Laden corporate network extended far beyond construction sites.
Mohammed's special intimacy with the king was inherited by the younger bin Laden generation and the numerous princes, the sons of Ibn Saud. Mohammed's sons attended Victoria College, Alexandria Egypt, the former educational bastion of the British Empire, where they studied alongside schoolmates many of whom would become influential and powerful in the Middle East.
When Mohammed bin Laden died in 1968 he had fathered at least 54 children with his wives. His son Salem bin Laden took over the family enterprises. The groupings of the family, presented as based on the nationalities of the various wives, results in a "Syrian group" of bin Ladens, a "Lebanese group," and an "Egyptian group" that employs 40,000 people as Egypt's largest private foreign investor. Osama bin Laden is the only member of the family with an Arabian mother.
The severe strain on the bin Laden connection with the House of Saud and the mark of its special position came in 1979, when Islamist insurgents briefly took control of the mosque at Mecca. Bin Laden trucks that came and went at all hours, had been used to smuggle arms into tightly controlled Mecca. Mahrous bin Laden had been the enabler, working with the Islamist insurgency. His connection was through the son of a Sultan of Yemen who had been radicalized by Syrian members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mahrous was actually arrested for a time, but is now managing the Medina branch of the bin Laden enterprises.
Any other family would have been stripped of influence. The Saudi authorities' decision to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden on May 16, 1993 did not betoken a breach of connection.
The two closest friends of the King were Prince Mohammed ben Abdullah (son of Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud's youngest brother) who died in the early 1980s and Salem bin Laden who died in 1988, when his light plane crashed in Texas. The plane's flight log had been a subject of some interest, for the plane was alleged to have been used to engineer the so-called " October Surprise" negotiations in the summer of 1980.