My father's death was criminal and I may sue the U.S.: Bin Laden's son slams Al Qaeda leader's killing

Osama bin Laden's family broke its silence on May 10, 2011. Omar bin Laden — the al-Qaeda chief's fourth eldest son, long based in the Gulf with his British wife Zaina — issued a statement denouncing his father's killing as "criminal" and reserving the right to take legal action against the United States.

The statement, published on the website of the Islamist ideologue Abu Walid al-Masri and flagged by the SITE Intelligence Group, said the bin Laden children reserved the right to pursue legal action in the U.S. and internationally "to determine the true fate of our vanished father." There was no independent confirmation that the letter was genuinely Omar's, though specialists in militant propaganda said the text appeared authentic.

The burial at sea

Omar's sharpest anger was reserved for what happened after the raid. The letter held President Obama "legally responsible to clarify the fate of our father," calling the sea burial a humiliation of the family — "unacceptable, humanely and religiously, to dispose of a person with such importance and status among his people, by throwing his body into the sea."

The statement also alleged the raid's goal had been to kill rather than arrest, claimed no one in the Abbottabad compound was armed, and said the U.S. had offered no proof to back its account of the mission.

The son who walked away

Omar bin Laden was a known quantity long before the statement. In 2009 he co-authored "Growing Up bin Laden" with his mother Najwa, describing a childhood in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Afghanistan under a father who, the book said, tried to steer his sons toward militancy. Omar had publicly distanced himself from al-Qaeda — which made his legal broadside against the raid, rather than against his father's legacy, all the more striking.