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Pakistan deports Bin Laden’s family to Saudi Arabia

A vehicle carrying the family members of Osama Bin Laden leave for the airport from a house in Islamabad April 26, 2012. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood

By Qasim Nauman

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The family of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed almost

a year ago by American special forces in a military town in northwest Pakistan, left the country for Saudi Arabia early on

Friday morning, the family lawyer told Reuters.

The move ends months of speculation about the fate of the three widows and 11 children,

who were detained by Pakistani security forces after the May 2 raid.

“Yes, they’re being deported to Saudi Arabia,”

said Aamir Khalil, the family lawyer. “It is a special flight.”

Once outside Pakistan, the family could reveal details

about how the world’s most wanted man was able to hide there for years, possibly assisted by elements of the powerful

Pakistani military and spy agency.

Any revelations about ties to bin Laden could embarrass Pakistan and anger

Washington, which had been hunting bin Laden since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The plane

took off at around 1:30 a.m. (2030 GMT) for Saudi Arabia, according to local TV channels.

Yemen’s ambassador to

Islamabad said the family, including his Yemeni wife, Amal al-Sadeh and her children, was heading to Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea

city of Jeddah.

“The plane carrying Amal and (her brother) Zakariya al-Sadeh and the rest of the family are heading to

Jeddah,” Ambassador Abdo Ali Abdulrahman told Reuters by telephone early on Friday. “This chapter that has continued for a

year is now closed.”

 

Saudi officials were not immediately available for comment.

A Yemeni foreign

ministry source said Sadeh and her children had travelled to Saudi Arabia at the request of the bin Laden family to sort out

their residency there and would go to Yemen later, without saying whether this would be to stay or to visit.

At the

house in Islamabad where the family had been held, a white minivan pulled up to take them to the airport. The women refused

to enter the van with a crush of media around it, so officials covered its windows with plastic sheets.

The Interior

Ministry, which was in charge of the family, said in a statement it had “passed orders for the deportation of 14 members of

OBL family in pursuance of the Court orders”.

“The family was kept safe and sound in a guest house … They have been

deported to the country of their choice, Saudi Arabia, today,” it said.

Apart from the three widows, the deportees

included seven children and four grandchildren.

Earlier this month, a court sentenced the women to 45 days in prison

for entering Pakistan illegally. It ordered their deportation after the end of the prison term, which began on March 3 when

they were formally arrested.

Pakistani officials describe bin Laden’s long presence in the hill town of Abbottabad as

a security lapse and reject suggestions that members of the military and intelligence service were complicit in hiding him

there.

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa; Writing by Chris Allbritton and Sami Aboudi; Editing by

Alistair Lyon)

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