My Osama was a good man, says mother

OSAMA Bin Laden’s mother has spoken publicly about her terrorist son for the first time, saying he was a ‘shy boy’ and ‘good man’ who was brainwashed at university.

Alia Ghanem, who is in her mid-70s, has only now been allowed to talk to the media after years of being tightly controlled by the government of Saudi Arabia, where she lives in a mansion in Jeddah. She said the future Al Qaeda leader, who was killed by US Navy SEALs in May 2011, was a shy child who took a wrong turn at King Abdulaziz University.

While studying economics in Jeddah, he met a member of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, Abdullah Azzam. Azzam was later sent into exile for his extremism.

Mrs Ghanem told The Guardian : ‘The people at university changed him. He became a different man. 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.

‘I would always tell him to stay away from them.’

Bin Laden went on to mastermind the suicide attacks on September 11, 2001, killing more than 2,000.