Bin Laden niece to be reality TV star
Osama bin Laden may not appear on television as much as he used to, but his niece is not so shy.
Wafah Dufour Bin Ladin has signed a deal to appear in a reality television show about her life and her, as yet, unfulfilled “quest for stardom.”
Dufour, who has dropped the Bin Ladin from her name, was born in California and raised mainly in the US but lived in Saudi Arabia from the age of three to 10.
Her mother was married to the al-Qaida leader’s half brother,
In a statement from ReganMedia, announcing the deal, Dufour said: “I understand that when people hear my last name, they have preconceived notions, but I was born an American and I love my country.”
Mode fan
Based in New York, her quest for stardom has so far involved promoting herself as a musician and posing for a sexy shoot in a lads magazine.
Dufour appeared in GQ magazine last December reclining on satin sheets wrapped in feathers and posing in a bubble bath wearing nothing but a necklace.
She cites U2, the Cure and Depeche Mode among her musical influences.
ReganMedia’s president, Judith Regan, said that Dufour’s story would “bridge the gap that people feel exists between the cultures she has lived in,”.
“She is also a young woman who falls in love, has her heart broken, worries about her looks, doesn’t always listen to her mother, and hasn’t spoken to her father in years,” Regan said.
Artistic family
Regan has published a string of celebrity authors including Michael Moore and porn star Jenna Jameson, and she was an executive producer on the reality show Growing Up Gotti about members of the family best known for its Mafia empire.
Dufour’s mother Carmen bin Ladin wrote the 2004 bestseller Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia, an account of her tempestuous marriage to Yeslama, Osama’s half-brother, who amassed a fortune in the family’s construction business and started his own investment firm.
Dufour was in Geneva with her mother at the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks. She had said in the past she had never met Osama bin Laden.
The statement did not give any details of when the reality show was expected to air.