My Fifth Wife: The family of Osama bin Laden's youngest wife have broken their silence to describe how the 29-year-old Yemeni, currently in the custody of security services in Pakistan, refused the chance to leave her husband, saying instead she was determined be "martyred" alongside him.
The relatives of Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, who became the al-Qaida leader's fifth wife in late 1999, spoke of a "sincere" husband – though one who apparently exaggerated tales of his own bravado for the sake of his in-laws.
Sadah, who Pakistani officials say was wounded in the calf during the operation that killed her husband, was among at least a dozen women and children detained by Pakistani security officials after the raid on the Abbottabad compound where Bin Laden had been living for several years. It is believed the American special forces team that carried out the operation was forced to abandon plans to evacuate survivors after losing of one of their four helicopters because of a technical problem.
Among those detained are two other women who have also been identified as wives of Bin Laden by Pakistani officials. However, this is unconfirmed. If true both would be Saudi nationals. The children appear to be a mixture of Bin Laden's own and his grandchildren. They include Sadah's daughter, Safiya, who was born shortly before the 9/11 attacks.
Pakistani officials have repeated that all those detained will be repatriated to their countries of origin.
Sadah's family spoke to a reporter from the Associated Press news agency in their two-storey traditional home in Ibb, an agricultural town in the mountains about 100 miles south of the Yemeni capital, Sana'a.
They said they saw Sadah, who was 17 when she was married, only once after her wedding, in 2000. Communication was largely limited to messages delivered by couriers.
The family said Sadah was a simple but determined and "courageous" young woman who was religiously conservative but not fundamentalist and who may have seen marriage with Bin Laden, a hero for some in the Islamic world and the son of a major construction magnate, as a means of social mobility.
Sadah, whose father is a minor civil servant, always told her friends and family that she wanted to "go down in history", according to her cousin Waleed Hashem Abdel-Fatah al-Sadah.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/12/bin-laden-wife-martyr-family
The relatives of Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, who became the al-Qaida leader's fifth wife in late 1999, spoke of a "sincere" husband – though one who apparently exaggerated tales of his own bravado for the sake of his in-laws.
Sadah, who Pakistani officials say was wounded in the calf during the operation that killed her husband, was among at least a dozen women and children detained by Pakistani security officials after the raid on the Abbottabad compound where Bin Laden had been living for several years. It is believed the American special forces team that carried out the operation was forced to abandon plans to evacuate survivors after losing of one of their four helicopters because of a technical problem.
Among those detained are two other women who have also been identified as wives of Bin Laden by Pakistani officials. However, this is unconfirmed. If true both would be Saudi nationals. The children appear to be a mixture of Bin Laden's own and his grandchildren. They include Sadah's daughter, Safiya, who was born shortly before the 9/11 attacks.
Pakistani officials have repeated that all those detained will be repatriated to their countries of origin.
Sadah's family spoke to a reporter from the Associated Press news agency in their two-storey traditional home in Ibb, an agricultural town in the mountains about 100 miles south of the Yemeni capital, Sana'a.
They said they saw Sadah, who was 17 when she was married, only once after her wedding, in 2000. Communication was largely limited to messages delivered by couriers.
The family said Sadah was a simple but determined and "courageous" young woman who was religiously conservative but not fundamentalist and who may have seen marriage with Bin Laden, a hero for some in the Islamic world and the son of a major construction magnate, as a means of social mobility.
Sadah, whose father is a minor civil servant, always told her friends and family that she wanted to "go down in history", according to her cousin Waleed Hashem Abdel-Fatah al-Sadah.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/12/bin-laden-wife-martyr-family
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| My Fifth Wife |
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