The Tale Of Osama Bin Laden's Youngest Wife

She was not used as a human shield, but according to the most recent account, Osama bin Laden’s youngest wife rushed the Navy SEALs as they arrived to kill her husband.

According to ABC News,

The woman, identified by a passport found inside the al Qaeda leader’s compound as 29-year-old Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, was in the room when the SEALs took the final, fateful shots at 54-year-old Osama bin Laden and was herself shot in the leg when she rushed, unarmed, at the special operators. She was treated for her wounds and is in custody in Pakistan, officials said.

There is also a daughter ages about 12 or 13 who allegedly says she watched her father die. The U.S. has been trying to interview the wife about life in the compound, particularly who visited and when, but Pakistani officials say she can’t speak because she needs medical attention, which everyone pretty much recognizes is bullshit.

As for Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, her age has variously been reported as 24 or 29. The youngest in a long line of wives whose number is unclear, The New Yorker‘s Steve Coll described her as “a kind of mail-order teen-age bride from Yemen, whom he married while living in Afghanistan during the nineteen-nineties, according to the account of bin Laden’s former Yemeni bodyguard.” She has also been described as having been “gifted” to bin Laden in the interest of strengthening ties with Yemeni terrorists.

Writing in Slate, Noreen Malone recalls a book co-written by an older bin Laden wife and her son Omar:

While Omar Bin Laden is less kindly toward Osama, he admits that “I never heard him shout at his mother, his sisters, my mother, or my sisters. I never saw him strike a woman. He reserved all the harsh treatment for his sons.” But Osama didn’t totally treat them delicately; at one point, after he’d moved the family to Khartoum, Bin Laden had his daughters and wives join in survival training, and he even taught them how to use guns, convinced they might need the skill to protect themselves. His second wife divorced him during this period.

The youngest wife claimed in 2002 she knew nothing about the September 11 attacks beforehand and didn’t know where bin Laden was, but she later found her way to him — and took a bullet for him.

The Young Wife Who Defended Osama Bin Laden [ABC News]
The Mrs. Bin Ladens [Slate]
Notes On The Death Of Osama Bin Laden [TNY]
Earlier: White House Just Kidding About Wife As Human Shield Thing