‘He was radicalised at varsity’

: The mother of Osama bin Laden has said he was radicalised while studying at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah in the 1970s and changed even more after participating in the jihad against Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan.

Speaking to the media for the first time, Alia Ghanem, now in her mid-70s, told The Guardian that she recalled her firstborn as a “shy boy who was academically capable”. But he became a “strong, driven, pious figure in his early 20s while at university.

“The people at university changed him,” she said. One of the men he met at the varsity was Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brotherhood member who was exiled from Saudi Arabia and became bin Laden’s spiritual adviser.

“He was a very good child until he met some people who pretty much brainwashed him in his early 20s. You can call it a cult. They got money for their cause. I would always tell him to stay away from them, and he would never admit to me what he was doing, because he loved me so much,” she added.

When bin Laden went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet troops in the 1980s, he was widely respected, said his half-brother Hassan. “At the start, we were very proud of him. Even the Saudi government would treat him in a very noble, respectful way. And then came Osama the mujahid,” he added.

Ghanem said bin Laden spent all his money on Afghanistan but it never “crossed my mind” that he might become a jihadist. HTC

NEW DELHI