RIYADH, March 9: One of Osama bin Laden’s wives has been quoted here, as saying that she has a feeling that Osama is still alive.

“If he had been killed, the whole world would have known it because the death of Osama cannot be kept secret,” she told the Al-Majalla magazine, on condition that the magazine should not mention her name.

Referring to the kidney disease Osama was suffering from, the wife said he used to complain about his kidneys and stomach pains. “Once, about two months before the Sept 11 incidents, he told me that he was going to Pakistan for treatment,” she told the magazine.

Asked whether he had left Afghanistan (in the wake of the US campaign against him), she said, “He never told me about any plan to leave Afghanistan. He always talked about his desire to die there.”

On the Sept 11 incidents, she said that Osama always avoided discussing the events with her. She said he had rarely spoken to her in recent months. “When I raised the subject once, he got angry and asked me never to discuss such matters with him,” she told the interviewer.

“He used to come very late at night and relax for a number of hours, lying in bed. He did not like to talk to anybody then. He used to take sleeping pills, so as to forget his worries and the pressures on him. He had also warned her against going out of their house alone.

“If you need anything, send the children to buy it for you,” she quoted him as telling her. “I used to spend most of my time inside our home,” she acknowledged.

In recent months, she said, Osama had come home only once every two or three weeks. “He used to say ‘I am very busy and I have some problems,’ or ‘I was in continuous meetings with Mulla Omar and other Taleban leaders.’”

Even if he intended to travel to another Afghan province, he did not inform anybody, she said.

Referring to the US allegations that Osama masterminded the Sept 11 attacks as well as the bombings of the two US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, his wife said: “I heard him saying more than once that the United States is the enemy number one that is creating problems in the region. He also said that America was trying to kill him and finish him off and that it deserved such attacks and more. Some youths, with the help of God, succeeded in teaching the US a lesson,” she quoted him as saying.