Plane Crash Kills Relatives of Bin Laden

Saturday, August , 2015

advertisements

LONDON — Three relatives of the former leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, were among four people killed when a private jet crashed on landing in southern England, British police confirmed Saturday.

The Hampshire Police said that formal post-mortems were still being conducted, but that the victims were believed to be “the mother, sister and brother-in-law of the owner of the aircraft, all of whom are from the Bin Laden family.” It said all three were Saudi citizens who were visiting Britain on vacation. The plane’s Jordanian pilot, Mazen Salem al-Dajah, also died.

Arab news media and NBC News named the relatives as Osama bin Laden’s stepmother, Rajaa Hashim, his sister Sana bin Laden and her husband, Zuhair Hashim.

Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdul-Aziz, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, offered his condolences to the Bin Laden family, which owns a construction company in Saudi Arabia.

The police said the four on board the executive jet died when it crashed into a parking lot and burst into flames while trying to land at Blackbushe Airport in southern England on Friday afternoon. The plane had been flying from Malpensa Airport in Milan.

No one on the ground was hurt. The police and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch are conducting a joint investigation.

Blackbushe Airport said the Embraer Phenom 300 jet crashed near the end of the runway while trying to land at the airfield about 40 miles southwest of London, which is used by private planes.

Andrew Thomas, who was at a car auction sales center based at the airport, told the BBC that “the plane nosedived into the cars and exploded on impact.”

The Bin Laden family disowned Osama in 1994 when Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship because of his militant activities. He was killed by United States special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

Bin Laden’s billionaire father, Mohammed, had more than 50 children and founded the Saudi Binladin Group, a construction conglomerate awarded many contracts in Saudi Arabia.

Home
Email

Hiiraan Online