Testimony from Osama bin Laden's youngest wife reveals the movements of the Qaeda leader before he was killed in a U.S. raid in May 2011.
Osama bin Laden spent nine years on the run in Pakistan after the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, during which time he moved
among five safe houses and fathered four children, at least two of
whom were born in a government hospital, his youngest wife has told
Pakistani investigators.
The testimony of Amal Ahmad Abdul Fateh, Bin Laden's 30-year-old
wife, offers the most detailed account yet of life on the run for
the Bin Laden family in the years preceding the U.S. commando raid
in May 2011 that killed the leader of Al Qaeda at the age of 54.
Her account is contained in a police report dated Jan. 19 that,
as a report of that frantic period, contains manifest flaws: Ms.
Fateh's words are paraphrased by a police officer, and there is
noticeably little detail about the Pakistanis who helped her husband
evade his U.S. pursuers. Nevertheless, it raises more questions
about how the world's most wanted man managed to shunt his family
between cities that span the breadth of Pakistan, apparently
undetected and unmolested by the otherwise formidable security
services.
Bin Laden's three widows are of great interest because they hold
the answers to some of the questions that frustrated Western
intelligence in the years after 2001. They are currently under house
arrest in Islamabad, and their lawyer says he expects them and two
adult children -- Bin Laden's daughters Maryam, 21, and Sumaya, 20 -
- to be charged on Monday with breaking Pakistani immigration laws,
which carries a possible five-year jail sentence.
The wives have cooperated with the authorities to varying
degrees. Investigators say the older women, named in court documents
as Kharia Hussain Sabir and Siham Sharif, both citizens of Saudi
Arabia, have largely refused to cooperate with investigators.
However, Ms. Fateh, who was wounded in the raid that killed her
husband, has spoken out.
The report, by a joint investigative panel made up of civilian
and military officials, was first noted by the Pakistani newspaper
Dawn on Thursday; The New York Times, of which the International
Herald Tribune is the global edition, later obtained a copy of the
filing. In Washington, U.S. officials said that while they could
not confirm every detail of the report, it appeared generally
consistent with what is known and believed about Bin Laden's
movements.
In the report's account, Ms. Fateh said she agreed to marry Bin
Laden in 2000 because "she had a desire of marrying a mujahid." She
flew into Karachi in July that year and, months later, crossed into
Afghanistan to join Bin Laden and two other wives at his base on a
farm outside Kandahar.
The Sept. 11 attacks caused the Bin Laden family to "scatter,"
the report said. She returned to Karachi with her newborn daughter,
Safia, where they stayed for about nine months. They changed houses
up to seven times under arrangements brokered by "some Pakistani
family" and Bin Laden's elder son, Saad.
Other senior Qaeda figures were also in Karachi, a sprawling city
of up to 18 million. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the
Sept. 11 attacks, claims to have personally killed the Wall Street
Journal reporter Daniel Pearl there during this period; he was
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News Column
Osama Bin Laden Had 4 Children and 5 Houses While Hiding
March 31, 2012
DECLAN WALSH
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