Osama Bin Laden's three
widows and two eldest daughters have been charged and sentenced for
living in Pakistan illegally, their lawyer has confirmed.
The women have already served a month of their sentence and are expected to be deported in two weeks.
They have been in Pakistani custody ever since US special forces killed the al-Qaeda chief last May.
The widows - thought to be two Saudi Arabians and a Yemeni - are believed to be in a house in the capital, Islamabad, which has been designated as a "sub-jail", with all of their children.
Formal legal proceedings against the women began last month, officials say.
Their lawyer has told the Associated Press news agency that he does not intend to appeal against the decision. He did not say where the family might be deported to.
Although this conviction is a step towards deporting the family, there has been no official comment yet from the Saudi or Yemeni authorities about the status of the women and their children.
Monday's proceedings lasted three hours, and
were presided over by a judge inside the makeshift court, which was set
up in the villa where they are living, the AFP news agency reported.
Despite having a $25m (£15m) bounty on his head for his role in organising the 9/11 attacks on the US, Osama Bin Laden lived in a secure compound in the north-western city of Abbottabad with his wives and children for nearly five years.
Over the last few weeks, details about their life on the run have been trickling out in media reports.
Amal Abdulfattah, 30, from Yemen, was Bin Laden's youngest wife and she claims that Bin Laden fathered four children with her while they were on the run.
She said two of her children were delivered in state hospitals, but she stayed there just "two or three hours".
Her account, which comes from a report compiled by Pakistan's internal inquiry into the Bin Laden incident, says she flew to Pakistan in 2000 and travelled to Afghanistan where she married Bin Laden before the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The family was subsequently "scattered", she told investigators, and she travelled to Karachi in Pakistan, later meeting up with Bin Laden in Peshawar and then moving to the Swat Valley, where they lived in two houses. They moved once again before settling in Abbottabad in 2005.
Bin Laden's two older wives have been named in local media as Khairiah Sabar and Siham Sharif, both from Saudi Arabia.
It is unclear how many children the women have between them, but most estimates say there are about 10 children. Only those above 12 were charged, AFP reports.
During the hunt for Bin Laden, most US and Pakistani officials believed he was hiding somewhere along the remote Afghanistan-Pakistan border, possibly in a cave.
He was finally killed on 2 May 2011 after US Navy Seal commandos stormed his substantial compound in Abbottabad. Several other men in the house were also killed, and Bin Laden's youngest wife was injured.
Source: BBC News
0 comments:
Post a Comment