Osama bin Laden: "Do Not Follow Me down The Road to Jihad"

KOMPAS.com - Osama Bin Laden told his children to live peacefully in the West where they would get a good education, his brother-in-law has revealed.

Zakaria al-Sadah, whose sister is the fifth wife of the Al-Qaeda leader, said Bin Laden did not want his children and grandchildren following in the same path of terrorism like him.

'He told his own children and grandchildren, go to Europe and America and get a good education,' according to an interview with Sadah in The Sunday Times.

Pakistani officials are refusing to release three of Bin Laden's wives and nine of his children who are being held in a tight security compound in Islamabad. According to Sadah, who was recently reunited with his sister, his children have been left traumatised by the raid carried out by US Navy Seals on May 2 last year which killed Bin Laden.

The children were discovered hiding in Bin Laden's compound in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad. Sadah, a 24-year-old journalism student, says the children will not eat and have not seen the sun for nine months.

He said the worst affected was his 12-year-old daughter Safiyah, who held the head of her injured mother during the attack. Amal, a 29-year-old Yememi, and the two other wives, Khairiah and Siham, have gone on hunger strike to protest against their imprisonment, according to Sadah.

Sadah, who fears his sister could be charged with committing crimes against Pakistan, thought he would be given permission to take the children back to Yemin when he was asked to visit last November.

But Pakistani officials believe they could be hiding information and have so far refused to issue them with passports. He said: 'These children have seen their father killed and they need a caring environment, not a prison - whatever you think of their father and what he has done.'

'They have never had a normal life. They do not know what it is like to see the sun and to run around the garden. It breaks my heart to see them.'

The wives are said to have remained loyal to their husband and were openly hostile to the U.S. officials who interviewed them after the raid. None have been charged with any crime.