Handout photo of Jane Felix-Browne from Moulton near Manchester whom local media said on July 11, 2007 has married Omar Osama bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, following a holiday romance in Egypt. [Reuters]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A son of Osama bin Laden confirmed Sunday he had married a British woman nearly twice his age, and voiced outrage at the publicity the wedding attracted.

Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother from Moulton, a village in northwestern England, told The Associated Press last week that she met Omar bin Laden, 27, while riding a horse near Egypt's Great Pyramid and that they married on April 24.

The Times and Sun newspapers, which initially reported the story, said she was in Egypt for medical treatment for multiple sclerosis at the time.

In a written statement published by the Saudi newspaper Al Wattan on Sunday, Omar bin Laden said he was "stunned and outraged" by the publicity surrounding his marriage to Felix-Browne, whom he identified as Zaina Bint Mohamad Al-Sabah.

Osama bin Laden's fourth son said his British bride was a Muslim and of partly Kuwaiti descent. This could not independently be verified.

"Her nationality is not an issue," Omar bin Laden said in the statement. "What is important is her religion and manner," the son of al-Qaida's chief said.

Felix-Browne, a five-time divorcee, is a parish councilor in England with three children by previous marriages and five grandchildren. She has confirmed she held Islamic marriage ceremonies in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia with her sixth husband.

She has said she was hoping to arrange a visa for her new husband to visit Britain, but acknowledged it would be difficult because of his family name.

Bin Laden's son confirmed the British grandmother was his second wife -- Islam allows men to have up to four wives as long as they can treat them equally.

"Yes, I am married to a Saudi woman from an honorable Arab family and I live a happy life with her," he said in the statement. "She has agreed to my (second) marriage," he said.

"Polygamy is not strange in our Arab and Islamic society," he said.

Citing an example from the life of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and his first wife, Omar bin Laden said the age difference with his new spouse was not an issue.

"The Prophet had married Khadija, the mother of the faithful, when he was twenty and she was forty," he pointed out.

Felix-Browne said her husband, a scrap dealer and one of 18 brothers, was raised in Sudan and Afghanistan after his father left Saudi Arabia.

She said the father and son last met in Afghanistan in 2000, the year before the September 11 attacks on the United States and a subsequent U.S. bombing campaign on Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban rulers who had harbored Osama bin Laden.

She said Omar was training to be a soldier in Afghanistan at the age of 19, when he left his father "because he wanted to see the world and didn't want to fight and die young."

Osama bin Laden had moved from Saudi Arabia to Sudan during the 1990-91 Gulf War, after failing to dissuade the Saudi government from turning to the U.S. for military help. He was stripped of his Saudi citizenship after continuing to criticize Riyadh's alliance to the U.S., and moved to Afghanistan after being forced to leave Sudan in 1996.