Bin Laden's widows, daughters jailed

ISLAMABAD -- A Pakistani court sentenced Osama bin Laden's three widows and two of his daughters to 45 days in prison yesterday for illegally living in the country, ordering them deported when the sentence ends.

With credit for time served, the women and several of their other children will leave Pakistan later this month, said lawyer Mohammed Amir Khalil. They have been in detention since American commandos killed bin Laden in a large house May 2 in Abbottabad, but only last month were they formally charged with immigration offenses. The Americans left the women and children behind when they flew off with bin Laden's corpse.

The women may have information about how bin Laden managed to remain undetected for close to 10 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The youngest, Yemeni wife Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, 30, has told investigators bin Laden lived in five houses while on the run and fathered four children, two born in Pakistani government hospitals.

Pakistani officials have said they had no idea the al-Qaida chief was in Abbottabad, which many in Washington found hard to believe with his compound close to Pakistan's equivalent of West Point. The United States has not found evidence indicating senior Pakistani officials knew of bin Laden's whereabouts, but said he must have had some form of "support network."

The other two widows are Saudi. Khalil said Yemen has agreed to the return of the Yemeni woman, but he is still in discussions with Saudi officials. In 1994, Bin Laden was stripped of Saudi citizenship because of his verbal attacks against the royal family.