Osama and Salem bin Laden met several times with the contacts at the luxury Dorchester hotel in London, according to The Bin Ladens, by journalist Steve Coll. “Don’t do any jokes with my brother,” Salem, it is said, told the others. “He’s very religious.”

The deal for Russian SA-7 missiles was arranged via “contacts” with the German arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch, through an associate of bin Laden’s half-brother, Salem, the book says. It suggests that payment for the weapons was made by the government of Saudi Arabia and that the weapons eventually were purchased in South America.

At the time of the weapons shipments, both the US and Saudi governments were supporting Afghan and Arab forces resisting the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan. But while the Reagan administration supplied Stinger missiles to the Afghans, the book said that the Afghans did not want the Americans providing such weaponry directly to Arab groups that had joined the fight, including forces organised by Osama bin Laden.

“We have made no bones about our support for the mujaheddin,” Saudi Embassy spokesman Nail al-Jubeir said on Monday. “We matched the Americans dollar for dollar.” But “in terms of what was bought, I really don’t know,” he said, adding that the Arabs eventually did receive the SA-7s.

Calls to Heckler & Koch’s offices in Virginia and in Alabama were not returned.

Among other revelations, the book says that Jalaluddin Haqqani, an Afghan fighter against the Soviets and now a Taliban leader in Pakistan, received tens of thousands of dollars from the CIA as a “unilateral” asset of the intelligence agency in 1988 and 1989.

It also says that US intelligence installed a listening device in a desk presented in the late 1970s to Saudi Prince Nayef when he became interior minister. Nayef’s discovery of the bug, it says, negatively coloured his views of the United States and inhibited his cooperation with US counterterrorism efforts following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Bin Ladens, published by Penguin, traces the extended bin Laden family from Osama’s great-great-grandfather through Osama’s children and other members of the youngest generation. According to the book and many previous accounts, few of Osama’s far-flung relatives had any contact with him during the growth of al-Qaida and rejected his turn to violence. Those living in or visiting the US at the time of the 2001 attacks left the country about a week later on flights arranged by the Saudi government and with the approval of the FBI and the White House.