Bin Laden ‘forced to retire’ and suspected wife plotted betrayal

Osama bin Laden spent his last weeks in a house divided, amid wives riven by suspicions.

On the top floor, sharing his bedroom, was his youngest wife and favourite. The trouble came when his eldest wife showed up and moved into the bedroom on the floor below.

Others in the family, crammed into the three-storey villa compound where bin Laden would eventually be killed in a May 2 US raid, were convinced the eldest wife intended to betray the al-Qaida leader.

The picture of bin Laden’s life in the Abbottabad compound comes from Brig Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer who spent months researching the events and says he was given rare access to transcripts of Pakistani intelligence’s interrogation of bin Laden’s youngest wife, who was detained in the raid.

Qadir claims al-Qaida forced bin Laden to retire from his position as “amir” — or chief — of the group and to live out his days in isolation from the movement he founded.

Qadir’s research gives one of the most extensive descriptions of the arrangements in bin Laden’s hideout when US Seal commandos stormed in, killing bin Laden and four others. His account is based on accounts by an official of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency who escorted him on a tour of the villa, the interrogation transcription he was allowed to read, and interviews with other ISI officials and al-Qaida-linked militants and tribesmen in the Afghan-Pakistan border region.

The compound where bin Laden lived since mid-2005 was a crowded place, with 28 residents — including bin Laden, his three wives, eight of his children and five of his grandchildren. The bin Laden children ranged in age from his 24-year-old son Khaled, who was killed in the raid, to a 3-year-old born during their time in Abbottabad. Bin Laden’s courier, the courier’s brother and their wives and children also lived in the compound.

The 54-year-old bin Laden himself seemed aged beyond his years, with suspected kidney or stomach diseases, and there were worries over his mental health, Qadir said he was told by ISI officials and an al-Qaida member he interviewed in the border regions.

Bin Laden lived and died on the third floor. One room he shared with his youngest wife, Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, a Yemeni who was 19 when she married the al-Qaida leader in 1999. Another wife, Siham Saber, lived in another room on the same floor that also served as a computer room, Qadir said.

The arrival of his eldest wife, Saudi-born Khairiah Saber, in early 2011 stirred up the household, Amal said in her ISI interrogation, according to Qadir.

There was already bad blood between Khairiah, who married bin Laden in the late 1980s, and Amal because of bin Laden’s favouritism for the younger Yemeni woman, Qadir said he was told by tribal leaders who knew the family. Even ISI officials who questioned Khairiah after the raid were daunted by her.

“She is so aggressive that she borders on being intimidating,” Qadir said he was told by an ISI interrogator.

Amal stayed close to bin Laden as he fled Afghanistan into Pakistan following the 2001 US invasion. She took an active role in arranging protection for him and bin Laden wanted her by his side, tribal leaders told Qadir.

Khairiah fled Afghanistan in 2001 into Iran along with other bin Laden relatives and al-Qaida figures. She and others were held under house arrest in Iran until 2010, when Tehran let them leave in a swap for an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Pakistan’s city of Peshawar.

Khairiah showed up at Abbottabad in February or March 2011 and moved into the villa’s second floor, Amal told her interrogators.

Khalid, bin Laden’s son with Siham, was suspicious, according to Amal’s account. He repeatedly asked Khairiah why she had come. At one point, she told him, “I have one final duty to perform for my husband.” Khalid immediately told his father what she had said and warned that she intended to betray him. Amal said bin Laden was also suspicious but was unconcerned, acting as if fate would decide.

There is no evidence Khairiah had any role in bin Laden’s end.

Amal gave her interrogators details on bin Laden’s movements after fleeing Afghanistan. Her account underscored that bin Laden did not stay long in Pakistan’s tribal-run regions where the US long presumed he was holed up.

Amal said they moved constantly to avoid being spotted for several months in South Waziristan, a border region. In 2004, she and other family members went to Shangla, a town in the Swat Valley, northwest of the capital Islamabad. Bin Laden joined them by doubling back through Afghanistan because it was feared he could be identified if he crossed Pakistan.

Qadir said he was struck by the lack of defences — no basement, no warning system, no escape routes.

Meanwhile Pakistan has charged bin Laden’s three widows with illegally entering and living in the country, the interior minister said. The three women have been in Pakistani detention since May last year.

He said their children were free to leave Pakistan, but could stay with their mothers for the duration of the trial.

A Pakistani legal expert contacted about the case, Hashmat Habib, said the maximum punishment the women could receive was five years in jail.