‘Bin Laden was Che Guevara fan’

DHAKA: Osama bin Laden’s three wives were fiercely loyal to him and gave little away when they were interrogated after the al Qaeda chief was killed in a US raid over a year ago, a Pakistani intelligence agent who questioned them said.

The three women were arrested by Pakistani security forces after the Navy SEAL raid on bin Laden’s safe house in the town of Abbottabad, about 35 km from the capital Islamabad.

Slowly puffing on a cigarette in a rundown Islamabad villa as he described months of questioning the women, the agent said he struggled to glean any worthwhile information.

Yemeni-born Amal Al-Sadeh, the youngest of the three, was headstrong and showed fury when asked questions, while the others, Saudi citizens, expressed displeasure by mostly keeping silent behind their veils, the agent said.

All appeared to strongly support bin Laden, despite the militant’s long and bloody record of orchestrating violence across the world.

‘They were all nostalgic whenever they talked about him’, said the intelligence agent, a slim man in a dark suit.

‘I could sense Amal was always angry whenever I spoke with her’, he added.

‘She objected to being questioned and rarely gave away anything’.

But at times Amal was somewhat flexible.

‘Amal once told me that she and bin Laden liked Che Guevara. She seemed like a rebel so I questioned her about Latin American leftists. I found her very interesting’, said the agent.

It was not possible to independently confirm his account, reports Dawn.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was an Argentine Marxist who was a major figure in the Cuban revolution. He was executed in Bolivia in 1967.

Amal, who was wounded in the raid that killed bin Laden, travelled to Afghanistan to marry bin Laden when she was 18 years old and he was in his early 40s, her father told Reuters in an interview in Yemen in 2011.

‘The other wives didn’t say much. They were boring’, said the agent.

BDST: 1305 HRS, MAY 26, 2012

Edited by Robab Rosan, Cultural Affairs Editor