http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/new...2165_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BINLADEN.xml&archived=False
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Her uncle may be the world's most elusive fugitive, but Osama bin Laden's niece is about as conspicuous as she can be in a sexy photo shoot in the January edition of the men's fashion magazine GQ.
Wafah Dufour is an aspiring New York-based musician who told the magazine that her family ties to the al Qaeda leader suspected of masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks have prompted death threats and sent her into a bout of depression.
As part of an effort to distance herself from her massive Saudi family, Dufour appears in a sultry GQ photo spread, reclining on satin sheets wrapped in feathers in one picture and posing in a bubble bath wearing nothing but jewellery in a second.
"I was born in the States and I want people to know I'm American, and I want people here to understand that I'm like anyone in New York. For me, it's home," said Dufour, who took her mother's name after the suicide hijacking attacks that destroyed Manhattan's World Trade Centre.
Her mother, Carmen bin Laden, wrote the 2004 best-seller "Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia," an account of her rocky marriage to Yeslama bin Laden, Osama's half-brother, who amassed a fortune in the family's construction business and started his own investment firm.
Dufour, who was born in Santa Monica, California, while her parents studied at the University of Southern California, said she had never met Osama bin Laden.
"Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him," she told the magazine in an article titled: "It Isn't Easy Being the Sexy Bin Laden."
Dufour said she would not date a fundamentalist Muslim and that her mother worries about her safety.
"My mom is always telling me that if I say something too drastic, I might get killed by a fundamentalist," she told GQ. "My mom is freaking out every day that some crazy fundamentalist is going to say, 'How dare she say that?'"
Dufour, who earned a master's degree in law from Columbia University, was in Geneva with her mother at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
She spent six months in seclusion there before moving to London, where she says she was hounded by the media and criticised any time she was visible on the social scene.
Dufour, who has a U.S. passport and does not speak Arabic, said she has only spoken to her estranged father twice in the past 10 years.
Asked how he would react to her posing for racy pictures in a glossy magazine, she said, "I think he would have a heart attack."
Such is the lure of the decadent West.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Her uncle may be the world's most elusive fugitive, but Osama bin Laden's niece is about as conspicuous as she can be in a sexy photo shoot in the January edition of the men's fashion magazine GQ.
Wafah Dufour is an aspiring New York-based musician who told the magazine that her family ties to the al Qaeda leader suspected of masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks have prompted death threats and sent her into a bout of depression.
As part of an effort to distance herself from her massive Saudi family, Dufour appears in a sultry GQ photo spread, reclining on satin sheets wrapped in feathers in one picture and posing in a bubble bath wearing nothing but jewellery in a second.
"I was born in the States and I want people to know I'm American, and I want people here to understand that I'm like anyone in New York. For me, it's home," said Dufour, who took her mother's name after the suicide hijacking attacks that destroyed Manhattan's World Trade Centre.
Her mother, Carmen bin Laden, wrote the 2004 best-seller "Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia," an account of her rocky marriage to Yeslama bin Laden, Osama's half-brother, who amassed a fortune in the family's construction business and started his own investment firm.
Dufour, who was born in Santa Monica, California, while her parents studied at the University of Southern California, said she had never met Osama bin Laden.
"Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him," she told the magazine in an article titled: "It Isn't Easy Being the Sexy Bin Laden."
Dufour said she would not date a fundamentalist Muslim and that her mother worries about her safety.
"My mom is always telling me that if I say something too drastic, I might get killed by a fundamentalist," she told GQ. "My mom is freaking out every day that some crazy fundamentalist is going to say, 'How dare she say that?'"
Dufour, who earned a master's degree in law from Columbia University, was in Geneva with her mother at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
She spent six months in seclusion there before moving to London, where she says she was hounded by the media and criticised any time she was visible on the social scene.
Dufour, who has a U.S. passport and does not speak Arabic, said she has only spoken to her estranged father twice in the past 10 years.
Asked how he would react to her posing for racy pictures in a glossy magazine, she said, "I think he would have a heart attack."
Such is the lure of the decadent West.
