Osama bin Laden

Sanaa, May 15 (Reuters): The Yemeni father of Osama bin Laden’s youngest wife said he initially rebuffed a matchmaker’s proposal that his daughter marry the al Qaida leader before blessing their union.

Ahmed Abdul-Fattah al-Saada said they were married in 1999 — well before the 9/11 attacks — and that all he knew about Osama’s politics then was that he had backed insurgents fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Saada said it took several requests before he allowed his daughter Amal, one of 17 children, to travel to Afghanistan to marry Osama when she was 18 years old and he was in his early 40s.

“My daughter was Osama bin Laden’s wife, nothing more, and she had no relation to the al Qaida organisation. I am confident of her innocence,” he said in his modest one-storey home in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, adding that he would like to see her return home from Pakistan.

“We are not in favour of bin Laden’s actions and the al Qaida organisation. We believe in co-existence between people.”

Yemen, Osama’s ancestral homeland, is home to an active regional arm of al Qaida that claimed responsibility for a foiled 2009 attempt to blow up a US-bound plane. It was also blamed for bombs found in cargo en route to the US in 2010.

Many of those who trained in al Qaida’s camps in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks came from Yemen.

Saada said his daughter came into contact with Osama’s circle as a teenager attending an Islamic religious school where she was a student of the wife of Rashad Mohammed Saeed, whom he described as an aide to the militant leader.

He said he did not receive any money from the Saudi-born Osama for the marriage.

“Rashad asked his wife to nominate a girl to marry bin Laden because he wanted a Yemeni wife. The teacher selected my daughter,” he said, adding that the man initially told him a Pakistani businessman wanted his daughter’s hand.

“I refused at first and insisted on knowing who this person was. After that they said that he was Osama bin Laden, from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia,” he added.

He later relented because his daughter backed the idea: “She stuck to her view and told me she wanted to marry him, and I have not imposed a husband on any of my daughters. So I agreed.”

Saada said he had never met Osama in person and that his daughter travelled to Afghanistan for the wedding accompanied by her sister, brother-in-law and her teacher.

He said her travel companions stayed on for a month to make sure she was settling in well. After the 9/11 attacks, he lost all contacts with his daughter, now 29, last speaking to her after the birth of her first child, a girl named Safia.

Amal was alleged to have earlier told Pakistani interrogators the family had lived for five years in the compound where Osama was killed.

Saada said his family had met the Yemeni foreign minister, who promised to help try to get his daughter and her children repatriated.