Osama bin Laden may have been found and killed in Pakistan, but that country’s leaders believe it wasn’t the only place where the al-Qaeda leader had traveled after fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in an exclusive interview with TIME on Wednesday — one of the first he has given since the raid on Abbottabad — thinks bin Laden may have visited his ancestral homeland, Yemen, in search of a new bride.
Just this past Tuesday, Gilani said, he received a cable from Pakistan’s Embassy in Syria, reporting that the sister of bin Laden’s fifth wife, a Yemeni national, was in Damascus, and had made contact with Pakistani diplomats there. According to the diplomatic cable, the sister-in-law claimed that bin Laden had married Aml Ahmed, currently 29, in Yemen in 2002. “That was after 9/11,” said Gilani. “And they say that they’ve got the proof.” If the information contained in the cable is correct, he continued, that would put bin-Laden in Yemen in 2002.
Ahmed had been in a bedroom with bin Laden when U.S. Navy SEALs had stormed the three-storey compound in Abbottabad, and she was shot in the leg after allegedly attempting to protect her husband. She is currently being treated at a Pakistani hospital, and the Pakistan government says it will soon repatriate here to Yemen.
The claim that bin Laden was in Yemen mere months after the 9/11 attacks could, of course, simply be an attempt to spread blame that Pakistan is currently attracting. Bin Laden’s discovery less than a three hours’ drive away from Gilani’s office has amplified allegations of either complicity or ignorance on the part of Pakistan’s much-vaunted intelligence agencies.
