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LONDON, Nov 3: The youngest wife of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been arrested after a gun battle at her father’s compound in Yemen, a British Sunday paper reported.
Amal al-Saddah, Osama’s fifth and favourite wife, who is in her early twenties, has been placed under house arrest and questioned by Yemeni authorities, The Sunday Times said on its front page.
Arab diplomats told the paper that shooting broke out at the family home in Ibb, south of Sana’a, when security forces arrived last month.
“She (al-Saddah) escaped from her hiding place in southern Afghanistan which he (Osama) had made his base, only to find herself closely guarded under house arrest in her father’s compound,” the paper said.
Her father and brother have also been taken into custody, partly because of US pressure to obtain information about Osama and his international web of terrorism, the paper quoted Yemeni sources as saying.
Amal, who married Osama when she was still a teenager, is said to have been the favourite of his four remaining wives — he divorced one — three of whom were in Afghanistan at the time of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.
OSAMA’S SON EXPELLED: Iran said on Sunday it had arrested and deported one of Osama bin Laden’s sons who entered the country illegally two months ago.
“He was one of 20 people who were arrested and immediately expelled from Iran around two months ago,” government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told Reuters.
A source close to the government told Reuters those arrested had been expelled to Pakistan.
The identity of the son, reportedly one of 20 fathered by Osama, was not revealed.
The Financial Times Web site this weekend quoted an unnamed Iranian official as saying Osama’s son had been arrested, along with several hundred other people suspected of links to Al Qaeda, as they fled over Iran’s eastern border with Afghanistan.
A US intelligence official in Washington said there was no information to indicate that Pakistan had Sa’ad in custody. “We don’t know that the Pakistanis hold Sa’ad,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
“We don’t have anything to substantiate that Pakistan holds any adult children of (Osama) bin Laden,” the official said.
Iran has repeatedly denied Western media reports that it was sheltering members of the Al Qaeda network, blamed for last year’s September 11 attacks on the United States.—AFP/Reuters
