Dreaded Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was a tyrant who trained his own children to be suicide bombers and murdered their pets, his first wife has revealed in a new book about her time living with Osama, reports The Mail, London.
In her book, Osama's first wife Najwa Ghanem has told how she gave birth to 11 of his 14 children because Osama said Islam needed many warriors.
Osama bin Laden, a millionaire, however, did not allow any modern appliances in his home, even refusing his son medicine to treat his asthma, she reveals.
On one occasion Najwa remembers how, in the 1990s, bin Laden took his family of four wives and 14 children on a camping trip to the desert of Sudan.
After finding an isolated spot, bin Laden ordered his sons to dig a ditches in the sand and all of the children, even one and two-year-olds, were forced to climb in.
The ordeal was supposed to be training for a future war between the West and Muslims.
‘You must be gallant,' he warned. ‘Do not think about foxes or snakes. Challenging trials are coming to us.'
When the children complained that they were cold bin Laden simply told them to cover themselves with dirt and said that they would be ‘warm under what nature provides.'
Najwa refused to protest at his treatment of her children because
The shocking stories of life with Osama bin Laden have been co-written between Najwa and her fourth son, Omar in their memoirs 'Growing up bin Laden' which is released next month.
Omar applied to enter Britain last year but was refused entry amid speculation that he still remained loyal to his father.
In this pic, Omar Osama bin Laden and his British wife Jane Felix-Brown, now known as Zaina Alsabah, 52 are seen during an interview in Egypt in 2008.
Omar has previously admitted he went through terror training with the Al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, but left after he rejected his father's beliefs.
He had planned to settle in the Cheshire village of Moulton with wife Jane Felix-Browne, but his visa application was rejected.
Najwa is bin Laden's first cousin and they were married when she was 15 and he was 17.
When she first met Osama bin Laden she saw him as a 'serious, conscientious boy.'
She writes. 'He was proud, but not arrogant. He was delicate, but not weak. He was grave, but not severe.'
Dancing, joking and laughing were all forbidden at the wedding between her and bin Laden. For more than 30 years she lived in purdah, where she was only allowed to meet other members of her family.
In the bin Laden household all air conditioning, televisions and phones were banned. Toys given to the children were destroyed. Even the children's pets were not safe from bin Laden's particular brand of total religious fanaticism.
He ordered a much-loved pet monkey to be run over because it ‘was not a monkey at all, but was a Jewish person turned into a monkey by the hand of God.'
And a litter of puppies the boys adopted was gassed by al Qaeda fighters to see how long it would take them to die.
In this pic taken from the video broadcast by Al-Jazeera in 2001, Mohammed bin Laden is shown at his wedding sitting alongside his father Osama in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden did not hesitate in training his sons to be suicide bombers as they grew older.
‘Listen, my sons, there is a paper on the wall of the mosque. This paper is for men who are good Muslims, men who volunteer to be suicide bombers,' Omar recalls his father telling him repeatedly.
One of Osama's youngest sons ran to the mosque to sign up; his father did nothing to stop him. When Omar reacted angrily to his father's plans, bin Laden told him with cold detachment: ‘You hold no more a place in my heart than any other man or boy in the entire country.'
Omar once asked his father: 'My father, when is this killing and war going to stop?' Bin Laden responded: 'Would you ask a Muslim when he was going to stop praying to God? I will fight until my dying day! I will fight until I breathe my last breath! I will never stop my fight for justice! I will never stop this jihad!'
While she remains married to him Najwa says she has not spoken to Osama since the 9/11 attacks and does not know where he is. She now lives in a secret location in the Middle East with her son Omar.
Bin Laden took three more wives - one picked by Najwa herself. She admits that 'few women dance with joy when they contemplate sharing their husband with other women'.
