WHEN 18-year-old Amal al-Sadah became the fifth wife of 43-year-old Osama bin Laden in 2000, she was “a quiet, polite, easygoing and confident teenager” who came from a big, conservative family in Yemen, a relative told media in an exclusive interview.

    The relative, Ahmed, who knew al-Sadah growing up, said she came from a traditional family in Ibb, Yemen — established and respectable but certainly with no militant views paralleling the al-Qaida leader’s terrorism.

    The family had no connection to al-Qaida prior to the arranged marriage, Ahmed told media during an interview in Ibb on Friday.

    “She was a very good overall person,” Ahmed said. “The Sadah family is a big family in Ibb. The family of Amal was like most Yemeni families. They were conservative but also lived a modern life compared to other families.

    An al-Qaida figure in Yemen named Sheikh Rashed Mohammed Saeed Ismail said he arranged the marriage and told the Yemen Post in 2008 that he was “the matchmaker” and that al-Sadah was one of his students, describing her as “religious and pious enough.”

    Ismail, whose brother spent time as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, accompanied the young bride-to-be to Afghanistan in July 2000, where she and bin Laden were married after he gave her family a US$5,000 dowry.

    The marriage was immediately fruitful, and al-Sadah and bin Laden gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Safiyah, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in the weeks after 9/11.

    Al-Sadah, who was wounded in the raid, said she lived in the compound in Abbottabad with eight of bin Laden’s children and five others from another family.

    With five wives, bin Laden had a total of 20 children, and one of his adult sons was reported killed in the commando assault. (SD-Agencies)