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'Motherlode' of Data Seized At Bin Laden Compound
itwbennett writes "The raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan Sunday also turned up an 'intelligence harvest' of computer-based data that was described by an anonymous government source as 'the motherlode of intelligence.' The data is being sifted through at a secret site in Afghanistan. An unnamed official was quoted by Politico as saying: 'Hundreds of people are going through it now. It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable. They cleaned it out. Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?'"
"Bin Laden" is "of the Laden family". The "bin" is akin to the Hebrew "ben", "son of" (e.g. "Yeshua ben Yosef", "Jesus son of Joseph".) The Arab equivalent to "of" (in this context) is "al", e.g. Saddam Hussein al Tikriti, Saddam Hussein from Tikrit.
As with other patronymics (e.g. the Scottish "Mac"), it's often used as a general family name, inherited for multiple generations. Osama bin Laden's father is Muhammad bin Laden. The original "Laden" is unknown, but goes back at least a century.
So it's perfectly reasonable to call him "bin Laden". It's his family name, at least a few generations back. Confusion arises only as with every other family name, in that there are a lot of bin Ladens out there, and you'd have to use his full name to be clear. But using just his first name would be equivalent to referring to the Chancellor of Germany as "Angela" or the Prime Minister of the UK as "Gordon": it's their personal name, and rarely used alone in public discourse.
You could use it that was as a deliberate insult of over familiarity. The New York Times took the unusual step of referring to him just as "bin Laden" rather than "Mr. bin Laden", which they reserve generally for the worst of the worst.