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British expat glazier Arthur Riding, 56, chatted about his experiences working for Osama Bin Laden in the 80s this week, and described the world’s most wanted terrorist as ‘a normal guy’. “You could talk to him and he was reasonably friendly,” he told the Daily Telegraph, describing the period in the 80s when Bin Laden lived legitimately in Saudi Arabia. “We installed bazooka-proof glass outside his master bedroom,” he recalled.
The builder’s revelations contradicted the picture painted of Bin Laden by US based author Yossef Bodansky, whose 2001 biography ‘Bin Laden’ portrayed an arrogant, sleazy, out of control party monster. “Osama bin Laden started the 1970s as did many other sons of the affluent and well-connected – breaking the strict Muslim lifestyle in Saudi Arabia with sojourns in cosmopolitan Beirut,” he wrote. “ While in high school and college Osama visited Beirut often, frequenting flashy nightclubs, casinos, and bars. He was a drinker and womanizer, which often got him into bar brawls.”
More recently, writer Kola Boo claimed in her book ‘Diary of a Lost Girl: The Autobiography of Kola Boof’ that she’d been Osama’s mistress and said he viciously tormented her with tales of his true love, Whitney Houston. “Whitney Houston’s was the one name that would be mentioned constantly,” she wrote. “How beautiful she is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and her husband – Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women’s husbands killed,” she said.
In contrast, Observer journalist and leading Islamic commentator Jason Burke spoke candidly about the terror chief’s courage, generosity and all round good character in his even more recent book Al Qaeda, specifically dismissing the Beirut clubber stories as propaganda. “Bin Laden was in fact a pious, studious, polite and somewhat shy teenager who married at 17,” said Burke. “Nor, as some have claimed, is there any evidence that Bin Laden is a fan of North London’s Arsenal Football Club and personally ordered the assassination of David Beckham, the English soccer star,” he continued. “For the record, Bin Laden does not have a small or deformed penis and is not homosexual either,” he added.
