Bin Laden family deported from Pakistan

PAKISTAN: Osama bin Laden’s family was deported from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia on Friday, nearly a year after the Al-Qaeda leader was killed in a US raid, ending a chapter Islamabad will be glad to put behind it.

Around midnight, a minivan whisked the 9/11 mastermind’s relatives from the Islamabad house where they had been in detention to the city’s airport, where they left for the Gulf kingdom on a specially-chartered flight just before 2:00 am (2100 GMT Thursday).

Bin Laden’s three widows and their children were held by the Pakistani authorities after the US special forces raid that killed the Saudi terror chief in the garrison town of Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, on May 2 last year.

Washington and Islamabad are now trying to patch up their relationship which was hammered by the revelation that the world’s most wanted man had been living for years just a stone’s throw from Pakistan’s elite military academy.

The incident was deeply embarrassing to Pakistan and raised questions about whether anyone in authority colluded to conceal bin Laden’s presence.

Authorities have already demolished the Abbottabad house and with the one-year anniversary of bin Laden’s death just a few days away, they will hope his family’s deportation will draw a final veil over a very sorry episode.

An interior ministry spokesman said deportation orders were issued for 14 bin Laden relatives to Saudi Arabia, described as “the country of their choice”, though the family was previously thought to number 12 -- three widows, eight children and one grandchild.

After being held for 10 months, the widows and two of bin Laden’s older daughters were sentenced by a Pakistani court to 45 days’ detention in their Islamabad house on charges of illegal entry and residency in the country and ordered to be deported. AFP