Monday, April 2, 2012

Pakistan to deport Bin Laden widows, kids

By Fakhar Rehman, NBC News in Islamabad, msnbc.com staff and news services

Updated at 8:48 a.m. ET: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan?-- A court in Pakistan has charged former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's three widows and two daughters with illegally staying in the country and sentenced them to 45 days in jail, their lawyers said Monday.

They will spend 14 days in prison ? having been in detention since early March ? before being deported to their home countries, including Saudi Arabia and Yemen.


In addition to the prison sentences, they were fined 10,000 rupees ($110) each, one of the lawyers, Aamir Khalil, said.

?The Yemeni and Saudi governments have allowed them to return and necessary travelling documents will be provided on release from jail,? he told NBC News. "We have right of appeal but will not exercise that."

The New York Times said court documents named two of the wives as Kharia Hussain Sabir and Siham Sharif, both citizens of Saudi Arabia. The third and the youngest is Amal Ahmad Abdul Fateh, 30, who is from Yemen. She was wounded in the American raid in which bin Laden was killed, it said.

Zakaria al Sadah, brother of bin Laden's youngest widow, Amal, told NBC News through his lawyer that he is "very happy that everyone will be freed soon and back with the family" in Yemen.

Al Sadah has been in Pakistan for months working to secure his sister and her five children's release from Pakistani custody, where they've been since the US forces' raid in May 2011.

He plans to stay in Pakistan until their release, in 2 weeks, and accompany them back to Yemen. He says they are "still working" on plans for their return, including where, exactly, they will live once home.

Once outside Pakistan, bin Laden's relatives could reveal details about how the world's most wanted man was able to hide in U.S. ally Pakistan for years, possibly assisted by elements of the country's powerful military and spy agency.

NYT: On the run, Bin Laden had 4 kids, 5 houses, a wife says

Pakistan's government and military have said they had no links to bin Laden.

Any revelations about ties to bin Laden could embarrass Islamabad and infuriate Washington, which staged a decade-long hunt for bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Bin Laden was shot and killed in May last year by U.S. special forces who stormed his house in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, about a two-hour drive from the capital Islamabad.

Exclusive: Bin Laden's brother-in-law speaks out

Yemen-born Amal Al-Sadeh, the youngest widow, and her four children were among the 16 people detained by Pakistani authorities after the raid, which also included two other wives from Saudi Arabia.

Arab news channel al-Jazeera reported that a Pakistani commission has interviewed the family members for clues about how the former?al-Qaida chief managed to stay in the country undetected.

Last month, bin Laden?s brother-in-law, Zakaria al-Sadah, spoke to NBC News in Islamabad in his first interview with an American television network.

NBC News correspondent Amna Nawaz, Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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