Osama's wife's brother pleads for her release

London: A Yemeni national has demanded that Pakistani authorities release his sister Amal, one of the wives of slain al-Qeada chief Osama bin Laden.

Zakaria al Sada, whose sister Amal was injured during a special US operation that killed Osama in Abbottabad in northwestern Pakistan, spoke for her release in an interview to The Sunday Telegraph.

29-year-old Amal is currently being held in Pakistan after being shot in the leg during the US raid on the al-Qaeda leader's compound at Abbottabad on May 2.

"Amal should be brought back to be with her family. Bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is over, there is no reason to keep her," said 24-year-old Sada, who has been taking part in the recent "Arab Spring" street protests demanding political

reform in Yemen.

Her family, from the city of Ibb, in the rugged mountains of northern Yemen, have demanded the Pakistani and Yemeni governments allow her to now return home with the child she fathered with the al-Qaeda leader.

She is being kept incommunicado in a military hospital near Islamabad, unable to speak to her Yemeni family with whom she has had virtually no contact since marrying bin Laden in 1999, the paper said.

Describing his sister, Sada painted a picture of a pious woman, who had been the apple of his father's eye.

"She has always been a very kind and polite girl," he said. "She was absolutely my parents' favourite daughter, and I remember how she used to gather us and give us lectures on good Islamic manners and taught us how to be kind to others."

"My mother cries constantly," added Sada, who has asked Pakistan's ambassador to Yemen for help in getting his sister home.