Pakistan was not Osama’s only hideout: Gilani
NEW YORK, May 12 (APP): Stating that Pakistan was not the only place where Osama bin Laden had travelled after fleeing Afghanistan, Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said that the al-Qaeda leader might have visited his ancestral homeland, Yemen, in search of a new bride. In an exclusive interview with TIME - his first since the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Gilani said he received a cable from Pakistan’s Embassy in Syria on Tuesday, 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.
Aml Ahmed had been in a bedroom with bin Laden when US 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.
The Prime Minister also said he was not even sure that bin Laden had been hiding in the Abbottabad compound for the past six years. The claim, Gilani said, “is not authentic,” adding that “terrorists don’t normally stay in one place for more than 15 days.”
Gilani accepted that there was an “intelligence failure,” but insisted that it wasn’t only Pakistan’s. “He was not confined to Pakistan alone,” the prime minister said. “He was everywhere.” And ultimately, he added, bin Laden was not his responsibility. “If they are concerned about bin-Laden, they should be,” Gilani said of his US allies. “That’s their issue. Bin Laden is not my citizen.
When my citizens are being martyred, I’m responsible for that.”