The Veiled Kingdom

On September 11th 2001, Carmen Bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her brother-in-law name would be linked to these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to the victims in America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her family would never be the same again. In 1974 Carmen Bin Ladin, half Swiss and half Persian, married Yeslam Bin Laden and found herself inside the complex and vast clan, part of a culture that she neither knew nor understood. Determined to protect her daughters from the inevitable restrictions within a society riddled with hypocrisy and contradiction, in 1985 she moved back to Switzerland, her home country. Carmen's story takes us inside one of the most powerful, secretive and repressive kingdoms in the world and the Bin Laden family's role within it. She is one of the few women to have acquired, through her husband, intimate knowledge of the inner workings of this society.