The sister, brother-in-law, and stepmother of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, as well as the bin Laden family’s longtime pilot, were killed in a plane crash in England on Friday, British police confirmed to the Associated Press.
Bin Laden’s stepmother Rajaa Hashim, his sister Sana bin Laden, and her husband Zuhair Hashim were flying in a private jet from Malpensa Airport in Milan to the Blackbushe airport, about 40 miles southwest of London.
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The plane crashed into an auto auction that was being held near the airport in Hampshire, England. No one on the ground was injured, but video posted online shortly after the crash shows the remains of the Saudi-registered Embraer Phenom 300 jet smoldering among the vehicles it landed on.
A witness at the scene told the BBC that “the plane nosedived into the cars and exploded on impact.”
According to The Guardian, the crash occurred in “perfect conditions” for flying, at an airport where the plane frequently landed that was presumably known to the pilot.
Osama bin Laden was disowned by his family and stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994. The bin Ladens own a large construction company in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi ambassador to the UK offered his condolences to the family.
Via Twitter, the embassy promised it would “follow up on the incident and its circumstances with the concerned British authorities and work on speeding up the handover of the bodies of the victims to the kingdom for prayer and burial.”
The bin Laden family has an unfortunate history with airplanes: Osama’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967, and his half-brother, Salem, was killed when his small plane flew into power lines in San Antonio, Texas, in 1988.
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