Bin Laden’s Will Orders Wives to Not Remarry and Children to Not Join Al-Qaida

Osama Bin Laden’s four-page will is dated December 14, 2001, just three months after the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden mentions the attacks in a sequence beginning with the 1983 suicide bomb attack on US marines in Lebanon, the 1993 killing of 19 US marines in Somalia, and the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi. He predicted that he would die by the “treachery” of individuals around him.

Bin Laden orders that his wives not remarry and urges his children not to go to “the front” or join al-Qaida. He also asks for his children’s forgiveness for not spending enough time with them.

See Ian Black, Bin Laden’s Will Says His Children Must Not Join Al-Qaida, guardian.co.uk, May 3, 2011.