1) Islamic Faith. Both the Bridegroom and Bride shall be practicing Muslims during the marriage and the children of their marriage shall be raised as Muslims…
2) Islamic Law Controls. All incidents of the marriage shall be governed by Islamic law, except as modified herein…
3) Only One Wife. The Bridegroom hereby waives his right during this marriage to have more than one lawful wife.
4)
The draft required Christine to give up her rights under California’s laws governing community property; Ibrahim pledged “under Islamic law” to support any children born to them. A provision captioned “Equalizing Grounds for Divorce” noted that under Islamic law, Ibrahim could initiate a divorce virtually at will, while Christine’s grounds for divorce were more circumscribed. Therefore, “The Bridegroom hereby agrees that he will take steps to terminate the marriage upon the Bride’s request if irreconcilable differences arise between them.” In the event of divorce, Ibrahim “shall have custody of the children after their infancy, as defined by Islamic law.”5
Christine later said that she and Ibrahim “never could agree” about all the points in the draft prenuptial contract. They decided to marry anyway. “We were supposed to sign it after the marriage and we still never agreed,” she said later. “So it was never signed.”6
Their wedding took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The betrothal ceremony consecrated their union under Islamic law. Visiting Bin Laden family members and other guests lodged overnight in the hotel’s pink stucco bungalows “and the wine and champagne flowed throughout the evening,” recalled Robert Freeman, one of those who attended. Half-siblings such as Shafiq and Huda were among those in attendance. Salem was still alive—the wedding took place in January 1987—and he presided over the reception dinner with his usual songs and jokey monologues. Christine was “a beautiful bride,” Freeman later wrote. Her dress molded itself tightly around her hourglass figure and spread out in circular drapes around her ankles. “Her long beautiful flowing red tresses mesmerized the guests…The top florists must have worked into the night preparing the stupendous array of beautiful blooms throughout the hotel. It was an unbelievable sight!”7
After their honeymoon, the couple moved into the mansion on Stone Canyon, across from the Riviera Country Club. Sibba arrived in January 1989. As they had planned, they divided their time between Bel Air and Jeddah. Christine found it difficult to be away from her mother, who lived in California, and to share space with the larger Bin Laden family at Kilo 7, Ibrahim later said. To please her, he said, he bought beachfront land beside the Red Sea and broke ground on what would become a seaside estate worth about $3 million.
It was not long, however, before their marriage slipped into difficulty. Their quarrels persisted, and finally, late in 1991, Christine decided to move out of the Bel Air house and take Sibba with her. Ibrahim hired his own lawyers after she sued for divorce. As his brother Khalil had learned in 1990, when America in Motion had its troubles, Ibrahim was about to discover that American attorneys, once loosed, could rattle even a mellow man’s serenity.
“DO YOU KNOW what your assets are worth?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea what your assets are worth?”
“No.”
Ibrahim sat in a Los Angeles conference room in the summer of 1992, answering deposition questions from Christine’s attorneys. The couple now seemed to be headed for a full-blown Los Angeles divorce trial; among other issues, lawyers for the two sides argued over how much income Ibrahim received, how his fortune might be valued, and what part of it Christine and Sibba might tap as alimony and child support. Christine’s lawyers found Ibrahim elusive on the subject of money. He said it was just not something he worried about or understood in any detail.
“Have you made any attempt to find out what your assets are worth?”
“Yes…I talked to my brothers who run the company. Nobody—nobody knows.”
“Which brothers did you talk to?”
“I talked to Yehia…Y-e-h-i-a…”
“Where is Yehia located?”
“Saudi Arabia.”
“What did you ask him?”
“How much each of them worth. How much each of—each one of us worth.”
“And what did he say?”
“It is hard to tell. He doesn’t know.”
“Did you tell him you needed to have the information to file with the Court in the United States?”
“No. I told that to my brother Khalil, and he told him.”
“And what happened?”
“Nobody knows. They don’t know.”
“…Mr. Bin Laden, other than what you have already stated, what attempts have you made to ascertain what your net worth is?”
“Just pick up the phone, and I talk to my brother, and to my knowledge, you see, I don’t know the work. I don’t work with them. I don’t know what they have, so what they send me, I assume that is what they—that is what they sent. I don’t know…”
“Do you know what your income is on a yearly basis?”
“It goes up and down. It is—it depends on the job we get. It is not like a salary, so I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, it depends on the job you get?”
“Like if the organization this year have jobs from the government, we have more roads. If we are doing good the profit will go up. If we don’t do good or if we don’t have a job, there is no profits.”
“What was your income for 1991?”
“I don’t know.”
“What has been your income so far in 1992?”
“The what?”
“What has been your income so far in 1992?”
“I have no idea.”
Michael Balaban and Christine’s other lawyers had particular difficulty believing that Ibrahim did not work at all, as he claimed, and, indeed, had never worked a day in his life. Under California divorce law, it was in Ibrahim’s interest to maintain during court proceedings that he did not receive any salary during the period of their marriage; if his income derived from assets he owned before he met Christine, it might be harder for her to win a large settlement.
“Do you know any of your brothers who don’t work at some job?” Balaban asked Ibrahim at one point during his deposition.
“Period—they don’t work at all, you mean?” Ibrahim asked.
“Exactly.”
“Yes.”
“Which ones?”
“Myself…”
“Well, give me a number, and then we will identify them.”
“Myself. Abdullah. Mohammed. Shafig…Abdullah Aziz…and some I don’t keep in contact with. I don’t know if they work or not.”
Balaban asked about his purchase of his Bel Air mansion during the early 1980s, before he met Christine; the price of the estate had been just over $2 million.
“How much cash did you pay?”
“I don’t remember, but some—around one million cash…No. More than that. I paid, maybe, one mill, six
