Washington:
A Yemeni cleric who helped arrange Osama bin Laden's fifth marriage has said the Al Qaeda leader wanted his youngest wife to be of high moral value, according to a media report on Tuesday.
Sheikh Rashad told ABC News that he helped arrange 54-year-old Osama's marriage to Yemeni 29-year-old Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah when she was just a teen. During the marriage, Fatah never complained and never made the Al Qaeda leader upset, Rashad said.
Manal Omar, author of "Barefoot in Baghdad" and expert on the role of women in Islam, said that Fatah, along with the other two older wives also discovered in Osama's compound, would be called to do almost anything the Al Qaeda leader wanted, according to ABC News channel.
"Fulfilling the desires of the male leader or husband in the family is a very important duty for women," Omar said.
It was no surprise to Rashad that Fatah apparently tried to defend Osama to the last, rushing the Navy SEALs before she was shot in the leg in the same room where Osama was killed. As a Muslim woman, she wanted to die a martyr, the ABC quoted Rashad as saying.
US investigators have been promised access to Osama's three wives who are currently in Pakistani custody, one US official said, and they hope to learn from them key details about life with the Al Qaeda leader in the Abbottabad compound.
But Imam Omar Saleem Abu Namous of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York said it's possible US intelligence could learn much more than details of Osama's day-to-day life in Abbottabad.
"I think Osama bin Laden may be was intelligent enough or smart enough to give each wife a duty to do," the broadcaster quoted Namous as saying.