KSA receives Bin Laden Widows with Welcome

Saudi officials have said they have no suspicions about Osama Bin Laden’s widows and children, who arrived in the kingdom late last week.

The three women and reportedly 11 children were deported from Pakistan last week.

A spokesman said the kingdom had acted out of “humanitarian considerations” in offering shelter to the group.

The group spent a year in Pakistani custody after Bin Laden was killed by US Special Forces in May last year.

“Saudi Arabia acted out of humanitarian considerations… in so far as there are no reports or evidence of any implication in criminal or illegal acts,” the official Saudi Press Agency quoted a spokesman as saying, AFP news agency reports.

The spokesman said the group had been welcomed by their relatives when they arrived in Jeddah on Thursday night.

The three widows and their children left Pakistan for Saudi Arabia which was, according to a Pakistani interior ministry spokesman, “the country of their choice”.

Bin Laden was killed after being tracked down to a safe house in the north-west Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

His widows and other family members were detained immediately after the pre-dawn raid.

The women and two eldest children were eventually charged with staying in Pakistan illegally, and last week completed a 45-day term of imprisonment at a villa.

The widows were held at the house in the capital which was designated as a “sub-jail”, and the rest of their children stayed with them. They were also sentenced to deportation.

The two oldest widows are Saudi Arabian, but the youngest – Amal Abdulfattah – is Yemeni and it is believed she will travel on to that country.