- New York (IANS Indo-Asian News Service) - Saudi Arabia
helped evacuate 24 members of Saudi-born Osama Bin Laden's extended family
from the U.S. within days of the terror attacks on American cities, The
New York Times reported Sunday.
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- Saudi Arabia's envoy to the U.S., Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
supervised the evacuation fearing violence against the relatives of bin
Laden -- prime suspect in the terror attacks -- as hate crimes against
Arab Americans escalated.
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- Saudi ruler King Fahd sent an urgent message to his embassy
that bin Laden's kinsmen were all over America and ordered that measures
be taken to "protect the innocents," Prince Bandar was quoted
as tell NYT by Online news agency.
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- "One of bin Laden's brothers called the Saudi embassy
frantically looking for protection. He was sent to a room in Watergate
Hotel and told not to open the door," he said.
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- They were driven or flown to a secret assembly point
in Texas under Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) supervision, and then
to Washington from where they left the country in a chartered plane when
airports reopened three days after the attacks.
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- "It's a tragedy," Prince Bandar said. "We
had to tell (them) to go home and wait until emotions calmed down."
Most of the relatives were attending high schools and colleges in the U.S.
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- Bin Laden is one of more than 50 children of a Yemeni-born
migrant who made a vast fortune building roads and palaces in Saudi Arabia.
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- His extended family spans the globe. He is estranged
from his family and from Saudi Arabia, which revoked his citizenship in
the early 1990s after he was caught smuggling weapons from Yemen.
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