Osama bin Laden's mother breaks her silence: 'He was a good child'

Alia Ghanem, the mother of Osama bin Laden, has broken her silence for the first time about her son, how she knew him before he became involved in terrorist activities and the shame he brought on the family after the 9/11 terror attacks.

"He was a good kid and he loved me so much," Ghanem said in an exclusive interview with The Guardian at her home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Now in her mid-70s, Ghanem spoke about how her firstborn son was shy, but strong and driven. She told the publication that she believed he changed while at university and "became a different man" after meeting people who "radicalised him."

“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.”

It's the first time Ghanem has spoken about Osama and in the interview she was joined by her two surviving sons, her second husband, a minder from the Saudi government and a translator.

She said that when he first travelled to Afghanistan in the early 1980s to fight the Russian occupation "everyone respected him" and said that as a family "we were very proud of him." It never crossed her mind that he would become a jihadist she insists and when they did find out Ghanem said "we were extremely upset."

The former al-Qaida leader's name has made headlines this week after it was reported in The Guardian that his son, Hamza bin Laden, married the daughter of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker of the 2001 September terror attacks. It was during this interview with the Bin Laden family that the relationship and marriage was apparently confirmed.