Osama is alive, claims al-Qaeda leader

Al-Qaeda leader Sheikh Rashad Mohammed Saeed Ismael alias Abu al-Fida has ruled out the news about death of Osama Bin Laden, saying that he is alive and kicking. He said that Osama married for fifth time few months before 9/11 and his Yemeni wife went to meet him in Afghanistan via Pakistan. During an interview, Osama’s close aide Abu al-Fida said that when Osama decided to marry for the fifth time, he turned to him to find him a Yemeni bride. After initial preparations, Fida escorted a girl namely Amal al-Sadah from Sana’a to Kandahar via Karachi where Osama would was waiting for his future bride. The expenditures of the marriage were borne by al-Qaeda’s financial chief Sheikh Saeed al-Masri. He added that Osama left Afghanistan before 9/11, however his wife stayed behind. After 9/11, he was arrested in Yemen and detained for two years. His brother Sadeq, 25, was seized in Pakistan and sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. A brother-in-law and a cousin remain there to this day. Fida blames a recent resurgence of the group called Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on the Yemeni government’s failure to help former fighters returning from Afghanistan. “Some of these men got frustrated and disillusioned and decided to head back to the mountains and regroup,” he said. He confirmed that the group had organised the failed attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian who had studied in London, to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into his underpants after training in Yemen. Fida now acts as an adviser to the Yemeni government, pressing it to provide money and jobs for rehabilitated radicals, and has offered to mediate between officials and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.