Advertisement

PAKISTAN: Osama bin Laden’s wife questioned, scrutinized in wake of raid

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Amal Sadah, 29, became Osama bin Laden’s fifth wife a year before the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, according to CNN. The Yemeni bride was 18; the Al Qaeda leader was 43.

Sheikh Rashed Mohammed Saeed Ismail, an Al Qaeda leader in Yemen, told the Yemen Post in 2008 that he arranged the marriage.

Advertisement

“I was the match-maker for his wife Amal al-Sadah, who was one of my students,’ Ismail said.

He said he accompanied the young bride-to-be to Afghanistan in July 2000.

Last year, Ismail described Sadah to journalist Hala Jaber as pious.

“Even at her young age, she was religious and spiritual enough, and believed in the things that Bin Laden -- a very religious, pious and spiritual man -- believed in,’ he said.


Bin Laden’s then-bodyguard claimed to have delivered the dowry.

“The sheikh gave me $5,000 and told me to deliver it to a certain man in Yemen and that man in his turn took the money to the bride’s family,’ Abu Jandal told the Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper in 2005. About a year later, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Sadah gave birth to a daughter, CNN reported. It was not clear whether the couple had any other children.

The passport of a Yemeni woman who appeared to be Sadah was found at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Bin Laden was killed, but the name is not an exact match, CNN reported. Yemeni officials told CNN they could not identify the passport and the Pakistani government had not requested to repatriate anyone at the compound.

CNN reported that a Pakistani military spokesman said Sadah told interrogators she didn’t leave the walled compound where the Al Qaeda leader was killed for five years.

Sadah, who was wounded in the U.S. raid that killed Bin Laden Sunday, said she lived in the compound with eight of Bin Laden’s children and five others from another family, Pakistani Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told CNN. All have been in Pakistani custody since the raid and will eventually be returned to their country of origin, Abbas said.

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Cairo

Advertisement