Osama Bin Laden Wives Sentenced To Prison, Deportation: Pakistan Worried About Information Leak?

Three wives and two elder daughters of Osama bin Laden have been sentenced to 45 days of jail time by a Pakistani court. They were also fined 10,000 rupees each, or about US$110.

The fines were paid immediately upon sentencing, according to Reuters, and the women's formal detention in Islamabad since early March will be credited to their prison sentence. That means the prisoners will serve just 14 more days before being deported back to their home countries.

On March 8, Pakistan formally charged the women with entering the country illegally and living there without a visa, according to AP. They had been effectively living under house arrest in Pakistan since May of last year, when U.S. Navy SEALS conducted a raid on their Abbottabad compound and killed Osama Bin Laden.

The three wives and their children were present during the raid.

Amal Ahmad Abdul Fateh, from Yemen, was living in a third-floor bedroom with bin Laden. She had married the al-Qaida leader in 1999 at the age of 19. Also on the third floor, sleeping in a computer room, was a Saudi wife named Siham Sharif.

The third wife, a Saudi named Kharia Hussain Sabir, arrived just months before the U.S. raid. She had married bin Laden during the 1980s.

Kharia moved to the compound in March of 2011, after she and others associated with al-Qaida had been released from detention in Tehran in exchange for an Iranian official who was being held in Peshawar, Pakistan. She moved into the second floor of the Abbottabad villa and was immediately considered suspect by some of the family members there, according to the Navy Times.

Bin Laden's oldest and youngest wives were reportedly at odds; Kharia is said to have been jealous of Bin Laden's favoritism for Amal, while Amal has accused Kharia of plotting to lead American troops to the compound to kill the al-Qaida leader.

But U.S. officials claim that the Navy SEALS were led to the compound by a courier, whose phone calls had been monitored by the CIA without his knowledge. He was killed during the operation.

Amal, who was with bin Laden as the commandos stormed in, was caught in the crossfire and suffered a gunshot wound to her leg. After the raid, she and other family members were placed under informal house arrest in Pakistan.

In February, Amal's brother Zakaria al Sadah appealed to authorities to release his sister and her five children from the small Islamabad apartment where she was being guarded by security personnel. He claimed that she and her children were suffering from physical illness and poor mental health.

The formal arrest of the women last month and upcoming deportation could be a response to his months-long campaign to bring his sister home to Yemen, according to MSNBC.

Analysts posit that Pakistani officials had likely preferred a longer sentence for the women who, once freed and deported, they may share sensitive information about their time in the country, reports Reuters.

Pakistan's government officially claims it had no knowledge of bin Laden's presence, but questions have surfaced as to how the al Qaida leader and his extended family could have spent years at the compound undetected by Pakistani officials. Abbottabad is home to a major Pakistani military base and only about 30 miles from the capital city of Islamabad.

So far, there is no evidence that bin Laden's wives were involved in al-Qaida operations. After two weeks, their deportation will be arranged by the Pakistani Secretary of the Interior.