Bin Laden's wife believes he is alive in Afghanistan

One of Osama bin Laden’s wives believes the world’s most wanted man is still alive and would never abandon his base in Afghanistan.

"He once told me that if he left Afghanistan, he’d leave to God,’’ she told a Saudi owned newspaper. ‘‘He had always wished to die there.’’

The woman, identified only by the initials AS, had lived with bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, which today published excerpts of an interview with her.

The full interview will be published in Al-Majalla magazine tomorrow.

Asharq al-Awsat said AS never asked bin Laden if he was behind the September 11 attacks or the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in which 231 people were killed.

‘‘He never liked to talk to me about these issues. He got angry when I tried to ask him and told me, ‘Never discuss such subjects with me,’’’ she said

She said, however, that she heard him say more than once that ‘‘America is his first enemy’’ and that he had praised the young men who carried acts against the United States and its interests.

Asked if bin Laden were alive or dead, AS said she ‘‘feels deep down that he’s still alive and that the whole world would have known if he had been killed.’’

‘‘Osama’s death cannot be hidden,’’ she said.

Bin Laden, whom the United States says masterminded the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, is thought to have four wives - the maximum Islam allows - a Syrian, two Saudis and a Yemeni. Estimates on the number of his children range from 14 to 18.

The newspaper did not mention the nationality of AS and did not say when or where she had last seen bin Laden.

Asharq al-Awsat said it was the first interview with AS since she left Afghanistan. However, it did not say when she left Afghanistan or where or when the interview was conducted.

She was quoted as saying bin Laden had told her he would never leave Afghanistan except for temporary medical treatment for chronic kidney and stomach pains.

The 44-year-old Saudi-born terror leader has long been rumoured, but never confirmed, to be suffering from several illnesses, including kidney and heart trouble.

Despite extensive US led bombing campaigns and exhaustive ground searches in Afghanistan, bin Laden’s fate remains a mystery.

There have been various reports that he may have been killed in the bombing campaign, holed up in a cave in Afghanistan or alive and hiding in neighbouring Pakistan.

Al-Majalla’s promotion for the full interview carried the headline: ‘‘He was afraid of the Taliban and the story about the kidney disease is true.’’

It provided no clue about why bin Laden would have feared the Taliban, the extreme Afghan regime that sheltered him until its collapse last November during the US led bombing campaign.

In her interview, AS said that bin Laden had long suffered from ‘‘kidney and stomach pains’’ - and told her about two months before the September 11 attacks that he was going to Pakistan for treatment.

The last few times she saw him, bin Laden looked restless and tired because of lack of sleep.

She also was quoted as saying that bin Laden ‘‘would stay by himself for long hours, lying on his bed’’ without talking to anyone.