KUN0001 4 GEN 0255 KUWAIT /KUNA-BIX9 POL-BIN LADEN-ASYLUM The day when Osama bin Laden applied for asylum in Britain LONDON, Sept 29 (KUNA) -- He claims to hate everything the West stands for, but it has emerged that Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Britain even as he was planning the September 11 attacks on the US, it was revealed here Thursday. The al-Qaeda leader wanted to abandon his base in Sudan at the end of 1995 and asked some of his followers in London to sound out whether he would be able to move to Britain, The Times newspaper said. Michael Howard, who was Britains Home Secretary at the time, recalled how his aides told him of the asylum request from the Saudi-born militant of whom the world knew little of ten years ago. A number of his brothers and other relatives, all members of the wealthy bin Laden construction empire, owned properties in London by the mid-1990s. The teenage bin Laden had reportedly toured Europe with his family and became a fan of the "Arsenal" football team, though there is no record of his ever having been to a match at their stadium of Highbury, in north London. The astonishing approach to the British authorities happened only months after bin Laden had secretly organised a terror summit in Manila in January 1995 to begin planning how hijackers would turn passenger planes into flying bombs. By this time bin Laden had also transferred some of his considerable personal fortune to London for his followers to establish terror cells here and across Europe, the paper added. His name rarely appeared in the British media even though by late 1995 his network had already bombed a number of US army bases abroad and plotted assassination attempts against Pope John Paul II and the US President Bill Clinton. Howard told The Times "In truth, I knew little about him, but we picked up information that bin Laden was very interested in coming to Britain." "It was apparently a serious request." "He already had people operating here, and who knows how history could have been rewritten if he had turned up here?" Bin Laden never got a chance to make a formal application as British Home Office officials investigated him and Howard issued an immediate banning order under Britains immigration laws. It was not until June 1998, two months before attacks on US embassies in Africa, that bin Laden was placed on the FBIs most wanted list. Howard added "If he had come here to plot the attacks on the twin towers and the US had subsequently asked for his extradition, then by then, under the Labour Governments laws, he could not have been sent because they refuse to extradite to a country which has the death penalty." Bin Laden had, according to Home Office officials, used a Saudi businessman Khaled al-Fawwaz, to sound out his chances of coming to Britain. Fawwaz, 41, had arrived in 1994 and was described by security chiefs as his "de facto ambassador" in Britain. Intelligence experts said that at the time of the asylum request, bin Laden was not enjoying his exile in Sudan, where he had moved after fleeing Afghanistan. The Sudanese authorities were making noises about expelling him, The Times concluded. (end) he.mab