Shafiq and Bakr bin Laden are the half-brothers of Osama bin Laden. Osama was disowned by his family in 1994 and there is no suggestion that his half-brothers had links to his terrorist activities.
Bakr bin Laden is the former chairman of the Jeddah-based Saudi Binladin Group and the former largest shareholder in the Group, with a 23.58% holding. He is the son of the family’s patriarch, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. His brother Shafiq is also a businessman.
Bakr attended college at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, in the United States.
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In 2017, Bakr was arrested in Saudi Arabia in a “corruption crackdown” conducted by a new royal anti-corruption committee and detained without trial. Bakr was initially detained at the Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh, and later held in a publicly-unknown location.
In 2019, Bakr and several other detainees were released by Saudi Arabia.
There have been reports that on the day Osama bin Laden’s men attacked America, Shafiq bin Laden, was at an investment conference in Washington, DC. He was with two people who are close to President George Bush: his father, the first President Bush, and James Baker, the former secretary of state. The conference was hosted by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that manages billions of dollars.
Recently, reports surfaced about links between UK’s Prince Charles and the two half-brothers of Osama bin Laden. It was reported that the first in line to the British throne met with Bakr and Shafiq bin Laden in London on Oct. 30, 2013, to broker the payment of $1.2 million from the family of Osama bin Laden to Charles’ personal charity, the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund (PWCF).
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Prince Charles accepted the money two years after the al-Qaeda leader Osama was killed. According to the Sunday Times, The 73-year-old took the money despite objections from advisers at Clarence House and PWCF.
