Read: Osama Bin Laden’s love letter to his wife revealed

• Posted on May 21, 2015May 21, 2015
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

In the message he spells out his love for his wife, saying ‘you are the apple of my eye’ (pictured right, Bin Laden’s third wife Amal Ahmed Al-Sadah, though it is not known if the letter was addressed to her)

A love letter between Osama Bin Laden and one of his wives has been discovered among hundreds of documents found inside his Pakistan compound after he was shot dead.

Originally recorded as a video message in 2008, the letter was transcribed on to paper and also outlines the terror leader’s final wishes in case he was killed.

Addressed ‘to my dear faithful wife’, Bin Laden describes her as ‘the apple of my eye’ and says she ‘fills my heart with love’, but without revealing which of his three spouses he is talking about.

In the note, he says: ‘Know that you do fill my heart with love, beautiful memories, and your long-suffering of tense situations in order to appease me and be kind to me, and every time I thought of you my eyes would tear for being away from you.

‘I want you to know that I will not marry on you because I will not find a woman like you, and I will remain in the land of jihad until God will bring us together.’

He goes on to say that if he is killed, she has permission to return to her family, but adds ‘you have to raise my children properly’

For his daughters, this means keeping them out of trouble and away from ‘bad company’ until after puberty, when they must ‘marry them to mujahidin, then that is best, or else to good people’

For his son, he says that the boy must be sent to stay with his grandfather to carry on fighting jihad, ‘because jihad is an obligated duty for all adults.’

Addressing his wife, he adds: ‘As for you, you are the apple of my eye, and the most precious thing that I have in this world.

‘If you want to marry after me, I have no objection, but I really want for you to be my wife in paradise, and the woman, if she marries two men, is given a choice on Judgment Day to be with one of them.’

The letter is dated August 15, 2008, when Bin Laden was thought to be in hiding in Iran, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

It was speculated at the time that the Al Qaeda leader might have been killed, as no messages from him had emerged since 2004.

However, on March 19 – the day commonly accepted to be Mohammed’s birthday – he released a new tape condemning cartoons of the prophet drawn by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

Bin Laden was eventually traced to a military compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was shot dead during a raid by Navy SEALs.

During the attack one of his wives tried to throw herself in front of the soldiers’ guns, but was shot in the knee and laid on the ground as he was killed.

It is thought that all three of Bin Laden’s wives, and his many children, are now living in Yemen.

MY LAST WILL AND LOVE LETTER: BIN LADEN’S NOTE TO HIS WIFE IN FULL