Agencies-Gaza post
Prince Charles got $1.6m from Osama bin Laden’s family
The Prince of Wales accepted £1m from the Osama bin Laden family, the former al-Qaeda leader, according to a report published in the Sunday Times.
Prince Charles personally guaranteed the money, worth $1.6m at the then interaction rate, from Bakr bin Laden, the head of the wealthy Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq, the UK newspaper said on Saturday.
Both men are half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda who masterminded the 11 September 2001, aggression against the US.
According to the Sunday Times, Prince Charles brokered the price after a private meeting with Bakr, now 76, at Clarence House, the prince’s personal home in London, on 30 October 2013, two years after Osama bin Laden had been killed by US special forces in Pakistan.
‘The fact that [he] was choosing to broker deals with a name and a family that not only rang alarm bells but [aroused] abject horror around the world… why would you do this?’
The heir to the British throne accepted the donation despite complaints from advisers at Clarence House and the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund, where the money was deposited, the newspaper said.
According to sources, several of the prince’s advisers pleaded with him to return the money.
One of his household staff said it would generate national outrage if the news leaked to the press. They reportedly told the prince that “it would not be good for anybody” if it appeared that he had accepted money from the family of the perpetrator of the 9/11 invasions, which resulted in the murder of 67 Britons alongside thousands of Americans.
According to the newspaper, one source said, “The fact that a component of the highest level of the British establishment was choosing to broker deals with a name and a family that not only rang alarm bells but [aroused] abject horror around the world… why would you do this? What good reason is there to do this?”
Charles was said to have felt it would be too uncomfortable to hand the money back and stressed the brothers would suspect the reason.
One household staff member thinks they were “very vociferous” with the prince but were “shouted down”. Another adviser to Charles is said to have begged the prince to return the money but was apparently ignored.
