Osama Bin Laden Wives Leaving Pakistan
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AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Osama bin Laden’s wives and children will be leaving Pakistan by plane in just a few hours, according to their lawyer.
The al Qaeda leader’s three wives — two Saudis and one Yemeni — along with nine children, had been held in Pakistan since bin Laden’s death during a U.S. Navy SEAL raid in May 2011 and were later convicted of entering the country illegally. They completed a brief sentence in detention and will be deported to Saudi Arabia at midnight, or 3 p.m. Eastern Time in the U.S., their lawyer told ABC News. The lawyer did not say why the Yemeni wife is also apparently being sent to Saudi Arabia.
American officials previously said they were allowed to speak to the wives once, but the oldest of the three was so combative that nothing at all came from the interrogation.
In the course of the illegal entry case against bin Laden’s wives, investigators revealed new details about the al Qaeda leader’s life in the shadows before he was killed in a nighttime raid last May.
According to a police report obtained by ABC News, bin Laden’s youngest wife, Amal Ahmad Abdul Fatah, told investigators that for a majority of the near-decade between the 9/11 attacks and bin Laden’s death, he did not live deep in rugged caves in the Afghan border region as was the popular belief but stayed in various houses in major Pakistani cities. While he was hiding, bin Laden managed to father four children — at least two of whom were born in government hospitals in Pakistan.
A video obtained exclusively by ABC News showing the inside of Bin Laden’s compound revealed that bin Laden and his wives appeared to have lived on the top two floors of the three story house, but bin Laden could separate himself as much as he wished. The house was built to sustain multiple families independent of each other.
Still, Phil Mudd, one of the men who hunted bin Laden with the CIA, said that bin Laden’s last years confined in his walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, with multiple wives and children most likely were not stress-free.
“I can only begin to imagine that that looked like American reality TV,” said Mudd, “that he was living in some version of the Kardashians in Abbottabad.”
Amal, 30, was shot in the leg defending bin Laden during the Navy SEAL raid.
“That kind of self sacrifice was something often discussed by bin Laden and other members of his family,” said Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio