U.S. seeks access to bin Laden widows

China.org.cn, May 9, 2011

The US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said the United States wants access to three of Osama bin Laden's wives being held by Pakistani authorities after the May 2 raid in which bin Laden was killed.

Information from the three women could reveal the day-to-day life of bin Laden, he said.

The role, if any, of Pakistani government officials harboring bin Laden also remains a question, President Barack Obama said.

"We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan," Obama said in an interview scheduled to air on CBS's "60 Minutes" program.

"But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate." He said, according to a Monday report of Bloomberg.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry said Sunday that government officials were still interrogating wives and children of Osama bin Laden and no country had sought their extradition so far, according to a website report of a local English newspaper The Nation.

Pakistan gained custody of bin Laden's Yemeni wife, Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah and other family members on May 2 after a U.S. operation killed the al-Qaida chief in Abbottabad, a small mountainous town some 100 km north of Pakistan's capital Islamabad, Xinhua said.

The report quoted unidentified Pakistani officials as saying that the wives and children of bin Laden captured in Pakistan would be returned to their countries of origin.