Osama Bin Laden had fourchildren and five houses while ‘on run’

OSAMA bin Laden, mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US that killed 3,000 people, lived in five safe houses while on the run in Pakistan and fathered four children – two born in state hospitals, his youngest widow has said.

The details of his life as a fugitive in Pakistan are contained in the interrogation report of Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, his 30-year-old Yemeni widow. They appear to raise fresh questions over how he was able to remain undetected for so long in Pakistan despite being the subject of a massive international manhunt.

Details from the report were published by the Pakistan newspaper Dawn.

Al-Sada is in Pakistani custody, along with bin Laden’s two other wives and several children. They were arrested after the US raid that killed bin Laden in May in his final hideout in the Pakistan garrison town of Abbottabad. The US Navy Seals shot her in the leg during the raid.

Mohammed Amir Khalil, a lawyer for the widows, said they would be formally charged for illegally staying in Pakistan next week.

Al-Sada said she flew to Pakistan in 2000 and travelled to Afghanistan where she married bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.

After that, the family “scattered” and she travelled to Karachi in Pakistan. She later met bin Laden in Peshawar and then moved to the Swat Valley, where they lived in two houses. They moved one more time before settling in Abbottabad in 2005.

According to the report, al-Sada said two of her children were born in state hospitals, but that she stayed only “two or three hours” in the clinics on both occasions. The widows are said to have used fake identities.

During the manhunt for bin Laden, most US and Pakistani officials said bin Laden was probably living somewhere along the remote Afghanistan-Pakistan border, possibly in a cave.