BAGHDAD: Just four days before he was about to legally change his first name, Iraqi teenager Osama bin Laden Hussein died after being accidentally electrocuted, a cousin said Thursday.
The 16-year-old was named by his father after Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose group carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US, his cousin, Mohannad, told AFP.
“He was born at the end of 2001, just after the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers (in New York),” said Mohannad, who declined to give his surname.
At that time, Iraqi media under former dictator Saddam Hussein “depicted Bin Laden as a hero, not a terrorist” and Hussein’s father chose that first name for his newborn son as a tribute, he said.
But that choice backfired.
After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, US soldiers raided the Hussein family home after they learned that “Bin Laden” lived there, an episode that scarred the young boy, said the cousin.
Hussein was afraid of venturing out of the family home, staying indoors to avoid encountering a patrol which would ask for his papers.
Eventually, he dared to go out and sold tea on the street to earn some pocket money.
His luck changed after he was interviewed by a local television channel two months ago.
Interior Minister Qassem Al-Araji saw the show and invited Hussein and his family to a meeting in Baghdad’s high-security “Green Zone,” said Ahmad Al-Hajj, the journalist who conducted the interview.
The family was “terrified” when they received the call from the interior minister asking to meet them but the visit went well, Hajj told AFP. The minister “joked with Hussein, gave him an iPhone and asked him to choose a new first name,” said Hajj.
The second death, in Iraq, of Osama bin Laden
The second death, in Iraq, of Osama bin Laden
