British divorcee marries Osama bin Laden son

Photo: British divorcee marries Osama bin Laden son

One of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden’ sons has married a British divorcee, British media and colleagues said Wednesday.

Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother from Moulton, Cheshire, in northwest England, met 27-year-old Omar bin Laden in Egypt in September, the Times and Sun newspapers reported.

Both newspapers said Felix-Browne, who also uses the name Zaina Mohamad, is a parish councilor, with three children and five grandchildren. It is her sixth marriage.

"Mrs Felix-Brown is married to the gentleman concerned," Elaine Beech, a clerk for Moulton Parish Council, told The Associated Press.

Felix-Browne told the newspapers that she met Omar bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader's fourth son, while riding a horse near the Great Pyramid, in Giza, Egypt. She had been in the country to undergo medical treatment for multiple sclerosis, she said.

"I just married the man I fell in love with - to me he is just Omar," she told The Times. "I hope people will take a step back and think what it is like when they fell in love."

The couple held Islamic marriage ceremonies in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Felix-Browne said.

She said her husband, a scrap dealer living in Saudi Arabia, had lived with his father in Afghanistan as a child but had left the country before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.

"He last saw his father in 2000 when they were both in Afghanistan," she said. "He left his father because he did not feel it was right to fight or to be in an army. Omar was training to be a soldier and he was only 19."

Felix-Browne said she has become Omar bin Laden's second wife, and is hoping to arrange a visa for her new husband to visit Britain, but acknowledged it would be difficult.

"Because my husband's name is bin Laden he finds it very difficult to travel anywhere," she told The Sun.

She divides her time between her home in northern England and Jedda, Saudi Arabia.