Members of the extended family of Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in masterminding the Sept. 11 attack on America, were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days after the assault, reports The New York Times. Saudi Arabia supervised the exit of the 24 people (most of them in American high schools or colleges), that country's ambassador, Bandar bin Sultan, told the paper. Immediately after the attack, one of bin Laden's two brothers in the U.S. called the Saudi Embassy in Washington, frantically looking for protection, said the ambassador. All the relatives feared that they might be subjected to violence if they remained in America. In the case of the brother, he was dispatched to a room at Washington's Watergate Hotel and told not to open the door, said The Times. According to the report, they were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then Washington from where they left the country on a private charter once U.S. airports had reopened three days after the attack. "It's a tragedy," said the ambassador, calling one of the family members "a bright boy from Harvard who, like the others, had nothing to do with this, and yet we had to tell him to go home and wait until the emotions calmed down. And he told me he never really appreciated why the Japanese wanted a memorial or an apology for their treatment in World War II." During that conflict, Japanese-Americans were rounded up and placed in American internment camps. In related news, bin Laden's adoptive mother, reportedly under treatment for cancer, checked into an American hospital in Paris earlier this month, police told Reuters, although they could not confirm a report that she arrived Sept. 12, the day after the attack on America.