'I cracked safes for Osama Bin Laden,' reveals Birmingham father-of-one

But Arthur Riding claims his modest life on the outskirts of Birmingham belies an incredible past as Osama Bin Laden's personal security expert.

Mr Riding, a father-of-one, has told how he met the Al Qaeda terror chief in the late 1970s when he was employed by the multi-millionaire Bin Laden family as a security contractor for its construction empire in Saudi Arabia.

Former boss: Arthur Riding made fireproof cabinets for Osama Bin Laden, and once cracked a safe for him

The 59-year-old claims he also worked for notorious Ugandan dictator Idi Amin after the African leader was forced from power in 1979 and eventually accepted by Saudi Arabia .

Mr Riding, a locksmith and legitimate safecracker by trade, spent 23 years working in the Middle East, after leaving his native West Midlands in search of a better life.

He told how his career included a stint for the world's most wanted terrorist when he installed bazooka-proof glass at Bin Laden's opulent summer house.

Mr Riding says he met Bin Laden on dozens of occasions and remembers the terrorist mastermind as a polite and quiet man.

Mr Riding said: 'There was no clue that he would go on to do what he has done.

'You could talk to him and he was reasonably friendly.

'I worked for the Bin Laden family a lot and that is how I first came across Osama.

'His beach house on the Red Sea was the most luxurious, expansive building you could imagine.

'We installed bazooka-proof glass outside his master bedroom that was 80cm thick.

'The walls are right up against the sea, so if you draw back the curtains you can see a giant aquarium through the glass.'

Mr Riding said he believed the death of Bin Laden's extrovert playboy brother Salem in a 1988 plane crash was an important factor in his radicalisation, a theory also put forward by a book published about the 9/11 terrorist mastermind earlier this year.

'His brother was killed in America in a microlight crash and that's what started to send him crazy', Mr Riding said.

'Before that he had been a normal guy really.

'He was a bit of a man about town and obviously being very rich he enjoyed a bit of the high life.

'When we had meetings with the whole family he would blend in.

'He was just one of the family.

Mr Riding also met the notorious Ugandan dictator Idi Amin during his time working in Saudi Arabia

'I installed fireproof cabinets for him, but never asked what was inside.

'I also remember cracking a safe for him right out in the desert. 

'He took me to a site very near to Mecca to open this safe.

'As always I didn't ask what was in it.

'The last time I saw him was the late 70s, before he went off to Afghanistan.

'Obviously he is persona non grata in Saudi Arabia now.

'We were dealing with the Bin Laden corporation and whenever they built something new, we were sent in to provide the best, most expensive security systems money could buy.

'It was all million pound vaults. It was the height of the oil boom and these men would pay big money to protect their assets.'

Mr Riding said he met Idi Amin in the early 1980s when he was called in to open a Japanese safe for the deposed African despot, then in exile in Saudi Arabia.

'After that I met him on numerous occasions', Mr Riding said.

'He was a very imposing figure who owned whatever room he walked into.

'He was jovial and fun, but obviously he had a horrible past.

'When you asked him about Uganda he would always blame his generals for what happened there.'

Amin died of multiple organ failure in hospital in Saudi Arabia 2003.

Variously described as being aged between 78 and 80, he settled there after initially fleeing Uganda to Libya, then Iraq. 

Mr Riding and wife Sue, 54, eventually returned to Woodgate, Birmingham, in the early 1990s.

Although he has retired from his career as a legitimate safe-cracker, he still gets called out to Saudi Arabia from time to time.