The Cellar - 10/30/2004: Young bin Laden in Sweden

The Cellar (http://cellar.org/index.php)

- Image of the Day (http://cellar.org/forumdisplay.php?f=10)

- - 10/30/2004: Young bin Laden in Sweden (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=7119)

10/30/2004: Young bin Laden in Sweden

http://cellar.org/pictures/youngbinladen.jpg

A REPEAT on IotD! I figured this one was old enough and interestingly relevant enough to bring it out again. IotD first featured this on September 24, 2001, and the recent bin Laden tape just having been verified as legit, it becomes oddly relevant. On the tape, bin Laden says in his opening,

Quote:

Security is an important foundation of human life, and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example.

Here's why: Osama vacationed there as a kid, and seemed to enjoy it pretty much, along with his remarkably modern, Western, colorful, non-female-repressing, pink-caddy-driving, ugly-tie-wearing family, in the year 1971. He was 14, and boy it must have seemed like a great time. You don't mess with memories like that by bombing them.

Why does that remind me of this?

I'll bet that kid in the purple suit and shades, sitting on the roof, became a terrorist. :yelgreedy

I think I waited table for that family one morning at IHOP. IIRC they were super-picky about the food and shitty tippers, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undertoad

pink-caddy-driving

Actually, that's a Chrysler Imperial.

And just how the heck did you figure that out? There's hardly any car to be seen for the Bin-Ladens! (okay, I do know there's enough there to be identifiable, but I guess I just expected that Bruce would be the one to do it).

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf

And just how the heck did you figure that out?

I looked at the original IotD thread. :)

I was pretty sure that it wasn't a Caddy, but I thought it was a Ford Galaxie 500.

Anybody else think it is creepy that there are two signs in that window behind them that read "FYND"? That's awful close to the "FDNY" you saw sprouting up everywhere after 9-11 (Fire Department of New York) in honor of the fallen public servants.

Maybe it's just me, but the guy on bin Ladens riight looks just like a young Saddam.
Could they be distant cousins. I don't like some of my cousins either, which I'm sure is a mutual feeling. I know this is absurd!!!!!!!!!!

But come to think of it, who actually killed JFK?????

He was ugly then but my god even uglier now, (if that is ever possible to become uglier). God there are some ugly people in both those photo's, they were all hit with the ugly stick at birth. :vomit:

Yeah, Leah--I always thought Osama was the ugliest man I'd ever seen. In the photo it looks like he's wearing a nice dangling earring. He's ugly AND a crossdresser. Betcha he's got girlie panties on under those cobalt blue bell-bottoms.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brown Thrasher

Probably ALL cousins, if not brothers. You may find the killer in this image. If he didn't kill JFK, he most likely killed someone. Hell- he may have even shot JR.......................
The photographer should have moved young bin laden & his "cousin" a little to the right. ( To hide the fact that they hadn't yet had enough time to steal the hubcap for the left rear wheel ). Must be a hot item in Sweden.

its like Sweeeden there! Sweeeeeeeden!

Is that all in the family? Or are the guys already doing some pimpin' over there?

He definitely put the GRRRR back in Groovy World Terrorist, baby!

Here's why: Osama vacationed there as a kid, and seemed to enjoy it pretty much ... You don't mess with memories like that by bombing them.

Yeah, I'm sure that's it. Too bad New York's board of tourism couldn't have convinced the bin Laden's to visit back in the 70s. All of this could have been prevented!

I wouldn't deny that's a family picture...every last one of them has the exact same nose! I mean look at it. You can't miss it! The only exception is the girl on the far left in the purple pants. Her nose doesn't match. She seems a bit out of place in that photo.

Recessive gene, resulting from infidel invader who got lost during 2nd Crusade, no doubt.

yesterday's NYTimes Book Review (p.11) claims Osama "did not make the trip," i.e., is not in this photo

Wow, four-year-old thread bump. Welcome to the Cellar, susancic.

That's possible. The fact that this was originally a Sun item does not speak much to its truthiness.

All Snopes has to say is "...he has never been to the West (save for brief excursion to Sweden as a child and a tour of Oxford in 1971)..." But as proof of that statement they point to a Frontline bio that doesn't mention Sweden. Maybe Frontline edited after getting more detail.

This Guardian article from shortly after 911 seems rather certain it's real:

Quote:

America's most wanted fugitive is wearing flares and a skinny-rib jumper, and smiling broadly, craning his neck so the camera will not miss him. Judging by his smile, and those of his 21 brothers and sisters, he grasps the absurdity of the situation. An improbably large group of fashionable Saudi siblings, sitting on a gas-guzzling American car in the middle of a faded copper-mining town in central Sweden on a bright day in 1971: the photographer from the local daily would hardly have been doing his job had he not requested a group shot. Osama bin Laden and his older brother Salem had first visited Falun the year before, arriving in Copenhagen in a private jet carrying a Rolls-Royce, in which they completed their journey. They were millionaires by then, but they stayed at the cut-price Astoria hotel, where the owner, Christina Akerblad, recalled them spending the days out "on business" and the evenings eating dinner in their rooms. "I remember them as two beautiful boys - the girls in Falun were very fond of them," she said. "Osama played with my two sons, Anders and Gerk, who were seven and five." They kept themselves to themselves. They bought silk shirts. They provided short-lived excitement to bored local policeman who thought they might be drug dealers. They liked it so much they came back the next year, with brothers and sisters in tow. The biggest alleged murderer in modern peacetime history was 14.

This Guardian item interviews the original journalist who was there for the photo and talked with bin Laden's father for the item. It also suggests the original item from 2001 ran in the Daily Mail as well.

I say it remains an interesting note that he mentioned Sweden in his tape and either he, or just the rest of his family, had a nice vacation there.

WOW! Since I join The Cellar much after that I have never seen this. Is there a way to look back at many of the older links to the daily pictures?

The archives: http://cellar.org/iotdarch.php

It occurs to me that there are so many IotDs that we should really have a "Best of" section. Maybe a field of 64 for each year would be a good thing.