NEWS
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Saarc international I Thursday 15 March 2012
Wife Betrayed Osama Out of Jealousy -Report
Osama bin Laden may have been betrayed to the US by a jealous wife who was angered by his preference towards a younger woman, a new claim. There was reportedly a poisonous mistrust between Osama’s three wives towards the end, with the oldest of them being accused of betraying him to US intelligence. Earlier La Vanguardia, a Spanish newspaper, reported that bin Laden believed he would be betrayed within his close circle and would enter paradise as a martyr. Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer, has researched the late al-Qaida leader, describing him as a feeble figure, struggling with the onset of dementia aged just 54 and unable to keep the women in his life from quarreling in his compound. According to Qadir, Osama bin Laden’s family got on well for years, but things changed in March 2011 when bin Laden’s older Saudi wife, Khairiah, unexpectedly turned up for the first time since the family was separated in late 2001. “The younger two wives had lived together happily. It was only when Khairiah arrived that these other two had a problem with her,”Qadir has explained, as cited by The Daily Telegraph. The brigadier is convinced Khairiah betrayed her husband, since she was jealous of Amal Abdulfattah, a Yemeni wife whom Osama married back in 1999 when she was just 19.
It’s another debate whether Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan May last year, when U.S. commandos raided. As Benazir Bhutto (2007) and earlier Madeline Albright claimed that Osama was captured or killed earlier than the recent US claim. That is another fact that Osama Bin Laden family was living at that house and some got killed and a wife was also injured during US marines high tech attack. Later US claimed the body of Osama Bin Laden was buried under sea and also another wiki leak email disclosed it was not. Now instead of investigating how and who brought Osama Bin Laden family to Pakistan, Pakistan has charged Osama bin Laden’s three widows with illegally entering and living in the country, the interior minister said last Thursday reports CBC. The Pakistani minister never disclosed if they were living illegally too despite former dictator Mushraff have disclosed in his book about Abbotabad hideout. The three women have been in Pakistani detention since May last year, when U.S. commandos raided the house where they, bin Laden and
several of their children were staying. The commandos shot and killed bin Laden, and then buried his body at sea. Rehman Malik said the three had been charged in court, but he did not say when. It was unclear if they had a lawyer. He said their children were free to leave Pakistan, but could stay with their mothers for the duration of the trial despite they were also entered illegally. A senior Western diplomat told CBS News on condition of anonymity that the charges against bin Laden’s
wives may be the result of pressure on Pakistan to keep them in the country. “It is quite plausible that the Saudis want these people in Pakistan, away from the public eye,” the diplomat said. “Once they return to Saudi Arabia, they may become a headache
for the Saudis, especially if they speak out on events surrounding Osama bin Laden’s killing.” A second senior Western diplomat said the news was “not surprising.” “My impression for some time has
been that there are many people who would not like Osama bin Laden’s family members to go public on the circumstances surrounding his killing.” One of the women is known to be from Yemen, another from Saudi Arabia. The nationality of the third woman is unclear. In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia, Syria; they were divorced before September 11, 2001. Bin Laden’s other known wives were Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s), Khairiah Sabar (married 1985), Siham Sabar (married 1987), and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). Some sources also list a sixth wife, name unknown, whose marriage to bin Laden was annulled soon after the ceremony. Bin Laden fathered
between 20 and 26 children with his wives. Many of bin Laden’s children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and as of 2010 Iranian authorities reportedly continue to
control their movement. In a report published in Daily Telegraph , Osama bin Laden apologised to his children for neglecting them as he devoted himself to holy war in a will
written after he escaped from US forces in Afghanistan. Brig. Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer who spent months researching the events and says he was given rare access to transcripts of Pakistani intelligence’s interrogation of bin Laden’s youngest wife, who was detained in the raid, paints a picture of bin Laden living in a house divided, with wives driven by suspicions. On the top floor, sharing his bedroom, was his youngest wife and favorite. The trouble came when his eldest wife showed up and moved into the bedroom on the floor below. Others in the family, crammed into the three-story villa compound where bin Laden would eventually be killed in a May 2 U.S. raid, were convinced that the eldest wife intended to betray the al Qaeda leader. Qadir was also given rare entry into
The 54-year-old bin Laden himself seemed aged beyond his years, with suspected kidney or stomach diseases, and there were worries over his mental health, Qadir said he was told by ISI officials and an al Qaeda member he interviewed in the border regions. Bin Laden lived and died on the third floor. One room he shared with his youngest wife, Amal Ahmed AbdelFatah al-Sada, a Yemeni who was 19 when she married the al Qaeda leader in 1999. Another wife, Siham Saber, lived in another room on the same floor that also served as a computer room, Qadir told The arrival of his eldest wife, Saudiborn Khairiah Saber, in early 2011 stirred up the household, Amal said in her ISI interrogation, according to Qadir. There was already bad blood between Khairiah, who married bin Laden in the late 1980s, and Amal because of
the villa, which was sealed after the raid and demolished last month. Pictures he took, which he allowed The Associated Press to see, showed the villa’s main staircase, splattered with blood. Other pictures show windows protected by iron grills and the 20foot high walls around the villa. Qadir’s research gives one of the most extensive descriptions of the arrangements in bin Laden’s hideout. His account is based on accounts by an official of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency who escorted him on a tour of the villa, the interrogation transcription he was allowed to read, and interviews with other ISI officials and al Qaeda-linked militants and tribesmen in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. Osama bin Laden in Pakistan’s children and grandchildren , from left to right, respectively, Fatima bin Laden’s grandson (5 years), Abdullah (12 years old ), Hamza (7 years), as well as children born Osama bin Laden and 5 wife Amal Hussein (age 3), the Zhana Bo (5 years), Ibrahim (8 years) The compound where bin Laden lived since mid-2005 was a crowded place, with 28 residents -- including bin Laden, his three wives, eight of his children and five of his grandchildren. The bin Laden children ranged in age from his 24-year-old son Khaled, who was killed in the raid, to a 3-year-old born during their time in Abbottabad. Bin Laden’s courier, the courier’s brother and their wives and children also lived in the compound.
bin Laden’s favoritism for the younger Yemeni woman, Qadir said he was told by tribal leaders who knew the family. Even ISI officials who questioned Khairiah after the raid were daunted
by her. “She is so aggressive that she borders on being intimidating,” Qadir said he was told by an ISI interrogator. Amal stayed close to bin Laden as he fled Afghanistan into Pakistan following the 2001 U.S. invasion. She took an active role in arranging protection for him and bin Laden wanted her by his side, the tribal leaders told Qadir. Khairiah fled Afghanistan in 2001 into Iran along with other bin Laden relatives and al Qaeda figures. She and others were held under house arrest in Iran until 2010, when Tehran let them leave in a swap for an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Pakistan’s frontier city of Peshawar. Khairiah showed up at Abbottabad in February or March 2011 and moved into the villa’s second floor, Amal told her interrogators. Khalid, bin Laden’s son with Siham, was suspicious, according to Amal’s account. Continued on page 31 >>