Bin Laden's Family Charged And Sentenced To Prison

A Pakistani court on Monday convicted Osama bin Laden's three widows and two of his daughters of illegally entering and living in the country and sentenced them to 45 days in prison, their lawyer said. The women have already served a month of their sentence and are expected to be deported in two weeks. The five women have been in detention since last May, when U.S. commandos killed the al-Qaida chief at the walled three-story compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where he had been living with his family for six years. Pakistani authorities formally arrested the women on March 3, so they will serve another two weeks in prison and then will be deported to their home countries along with the family's younger children, said their lawyer, Mohammed Amir Khalil. The case treads on a number of sensitive issues for Pakistan. The army faced rare domestic criticism following the U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida chief because they were powerless to stop it. Citizens also said bin Laden's presence in the country for so long either pointed to the military's incompetence or complicity. Two of the widows are Saudi and one is Yemeni, Khalil said. Khalil said Yemen has consented to the return, but he is still in discussions with Saudi officials. Saudi Arabia stripped bin Laden of his citizenship in 1994 because of his verbal attacks against the Saudi royal family. A member of the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they had talked to Saudi officials, who indicated they would be willing to allow the widows to return and grant their children citizenship if requested. But the family, which is prominent and wealthy, has not decided whether to intervene on the women's behalf, he said. The Saudi Foreign Ministry declined to comment.