SANA'A: The Yemeni father of Osama Bin Laden's youngest wife, wounded in a US raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader, said he initially rebuffed a matchmaker's proposal that his daughter marry Bin Laden, before blessing their union. Ahmed Abdul-Fattah Al-Saada said they were married in 1999, well before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and that all he knew about Bin Laden's politics then was that he had backed insurgents fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Saada told Reuters it took several requests before he allowed his daughter Amal, one of 17 children, to travel to Afghanistan to marry Bin Laden 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-Qaeda organization. I am confident of her innocence,” he told Reuters in an interview in his modest one-storey home in the Yemeni capital Sana'a, adding that he would like to see her returned home from Pakistan. “We are not in favor of Bin Laden's actions and the Al-Qaeda organization. We believe in coexistence between people.” Saada said his daughter came into contact with Bin Laden'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 Bin Laden 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,” he added. He later relented because his daughter backed the idea. “We did not know until now where she was or how she was living or how many children she had,” he said. “We are not worried about the Americans interrogating her because she is just the wife of Osama Bin Laden, and she and her children have no link to what he did. But I strongly reject handing to the American side this Yemeni citizen. She needs to return to her country,” he added.
