Bin Laden Fathered 4 Kids While on the Run: Wife

Youngest wife reveals al-Qaeda leader's movements after 9/11
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 30, 2012 7:47 AM CDT
Bin Laden Fathered 4 Kids While on the Run: Wife
This is an undated file photo shows then-al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan. The hunt for Osama bin Laden took nearly a decade. It could take even longer to uncover U.S. government emails, planning reports, photographs and more that would shed light on how an elite team of Navy SEALs killed...   (AP Photo)

During the nine years Osama bin Laden spent in hiding in Pakistan after 9/11, he made his way between five different homes in the country and fathered four children, according to his youngest wife. As recounted by a Pakistani police report, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah revealed that two of the children were born in government hospitals, and these new details have the New York Times wondering how her husband was able to traverse the country with family in tow without being caught by Pakistani's powerful security forces.

The bin Laden family split up after 9/11, but Abdulfattah joined her husband in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in 2002, she said. The family hid in rural northwest Pakistan, not far from Islamabad, though not in the tribal regions where Western authorities were searching. In 2003, they moved to Haripur, nearer to Islamabad, where Abdulfattah had two children in government hospitals, apparently under a fake name. They moved to Abbottabad, where bin Laden was killed, in 2005. Two more children were born there. Click for the full account of bin Laden's movements, including a near miss by US forces. (More Osama bin Laden stories.)

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