Real Housewives of Abbottabad

They were not a happy group, according to a retired Pakistani Army General who has investigated bin Laden's final domestic arrangements. There were three wives with bin Laden in his Abbottabad household, and that seems to have been one too many. The oldest one, age 62, clashed with the newest and youngest one, age 32, and might even have been responsible, wittingly or unwittingly, for bringing on the U.S. military raid that killed bin Laden.   

McClatchy newspapers reports bin Laden widows charged as new probe describes discord in his home:

Pakistani authorities said Thursday that they'd filed charges against Osama bin Laden's three widows as an investigation revealed fresh details of the dead al Qaida leader's family life in Pakistan — including suspicions by two of the women that the oldest wife would betray him.

--snip --

Qadir [a retired brigadier who maintains ties to top levels of the Pakistani army] believes that bin Laden likely had undergone a kidney transplant, was living in effective retirement in Abbottabad and may have gone senile. The tranquility of his large household was shattered when it was joined early last year by the oldest of his remaining three wives, Qadir said in an interview.

There were 27 people packed into the house in Abbottabad when U.S. Navy SEALs arrived on the night of May 2, 2011. But until a few months before that, when bin Laden's oldest surviving wife, Khairiah Sabar, joined them, they had all got on well, Qadir found.

"When Khairiah came, everybody else was very suspicious of her. They didn't trust her at all," Qadir said.

"Everything begins to happen with her arrival. Until then, the Americans seem to know nothing."

-- snip --

Khairiah, a Saudi whom bin Laden married in 1985 as his third wife (he married six times), was freed from Iranian custody in 2010 as part of a murky exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been kidnapped by extremists in Pakistan. About 62 years old, she made her way without her children to Abbottabad on bin Laden's instructions.

The other two wives — Siham, a Saudi aged around 54, who had three adult children with her, and Amal, a Yemeni aged around 31, who had five young children — had lived with bin Laden since he moved into the Abbottabad home in mid-2005. They also had been with him for periods at other hiding places in Pakistan after 2001, according to Qadir.

That situation does not sound good at all.

Bin Laden could have avoided so much trouble for himself if he'd only put his wives in separate houses. Why cheap out with just the one house? Wasn't he a multi-millionaire, or a Trustafarian, or at least someone with serious wealth? 

New Man Law: two or more wives may not inhabit the same domicile at the same time.