On the Run, Bin Laden Had 4 Children and 5 Houses, a Wife Says

The Bin Laden family saga—as reconstructed through accounts of his wives, children, and the compound where he was killed in Abbottabad—offered a portrait of a wanted man living a more domestic and settled life than the image of a global fugitive in perpetual flight suggested, raising enduring questions about what Pakistani authorities knew and when.

The compound in Abbottabad, where bin Laden spent at least five years, was not a spartan hideout. It was a three-story structure with high walls, situated in a relatively affluent neighborhood near Pakistan's premier military academy. Bin Laden lived there with multiple wives and a collection of children, apparently following a routine of sorts—writing, reading, occasionally walking in the compound's garden, and largely avoiding the digital communications that might have revealed his location to signals intelligence.

The details came from Amal Ahmad Abdul Fateh, the youngest of his three wives, who married bin Laden in 2000 and gave the most detailed account yet of the family\u2019s movements after September 11, according to the New York Times. After fleeing Afghanistan for Karachi, she said, she rejoined bin Laden in Peshawar in late 2002; the family then moved to the Swat Valley, to Haripur in 2003 \u2014 where she gave birth to two children \u2014 and to Abbottabad in 2005, where two more were born. In all, she described at least five residences across Pakistan, a country whose security services denied any knowledge of where the world\u2019s most wanted terrorist was hiding. She said the family received help along the way from \u201cPashtun hosts.\u201d

The gap between what ISI knew and what it was prepared to acknowledge has never been definitively established. American officials spoke publicly of bin Laden's presence in Pakistan without suggesting that Pakistani authorities had provided assistance; privately, the picture was considerably murkier.

The killing on May 2, 2011, left the question of Pakistani complicity or negligence permanently unresolved. Investigations by Pakistani authorities into the security breach—how bin Laden had lived undiscovered for years—produced inconclusive findings that satisfied no one and embarrassed everyone.