A heavy contingent of police escorted a minibus carrying Osama bin Laden’s family to Chaklala Airbase late on Thursday night.
Earlier, a special chartered plane from Saudi Arabia arrived at the airbase with Saudi foreign ministry officials onboard to receive the al Qaeda cheif’s family.
The plane was ready to leave for Jeddah while documentation formalities were being fulfilled by port authorities till the filing of this report. Saudia Arabia was chosen as the country of their choice by the detained family members, the interior ministry said.
Atif Ali Khan, counsel for Bin Laden’s family, said that the interior and foreign ministry had issued a No Objection Certificate (NoC) to the deportees after which the arrangements were finalised. He, however, refused to disclose the agreement under which the family was issued the NoC.
The 12-member family, including Bin Laden’s three widows, eight children and one grandchild were being kept in a guest house in Islamabad which was declared as sub-jail by Islamabad High Court. A statement issued by the ministry of interior said they were deported in pursuance of the court orders.
Two of the wives are Saudi nationals and the third is from Yemen, while Bin Laden’s daughters were born in Pakistan.
Earlier this month, a court sentenced the widows and two of Bin Laden’s older daughters to 45 days’ detention on charges of illegal entry and residency in Pakistan and ordered their deportation as soon as possible. They completed the sentence on Tuesday, counting time already served since they were formally arrested on March 3.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 27th, 2012.
COMMENTS (16)
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@aslam khan:
I believe there were two other men in the same house. One was the courier who carried OBL's messages and also sent OBL's emails from an internet cafe and the other, probably the nephew or someone related to the courier. Initial reports said that they were also killed. Did not follow up on this news. So, I am not sure what happened.
So Pakistanis won't even spare the kids and the wives from their conspiracy theories...
good riddance indeed!
Good riddance
@aslam khan
What are you hinting at? Please spare the child.
CIA to receive these ladies & kids at Saudi Arabia. These ladies and kids would now be grilled shamelessly by CIA. Yet an other Musharaf like move by our authorities. May Allah protect them from these vultures
I hope Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yamen and other Arabs will own and take away their muck.
Name of family members?
It says that the family included Bin Ladin's grandchild. May be I missed the news. Who is Bin Ladin's son-inlaw and where is he now ? Anyone knows ?
Good riddance!
The OBL family will remain under "detention" to avoid spilling out the details of the attack on 2 May and "who" was actually killed in that attack.
3 wives , 8 children and 1 grandchild qeite a family to maintain in pakistan how can no one be aware of .
Grandchild? How?who was the father? The only male was bin laden.
May be its the end of OBL file.
Spare them
The governments of Pakistan and SA were under lot of pressure from militant organisations to deport the OBL's family.