Thaindian News

Washington, May 9 (IANS) As it seeks answers from Pakistan whether government or security officials were complicit in hiding Osama Bin Laden, the US has asked for access to the Al Qaeda leader’s three widows.

The three women, who are in Pakistani custody since the May 1 American raid that killed bin Laden inside his Abbottabad hideout, just 50 km from Islamabad, US officials hope could unravel the mystery besides possibly providing more information about Al Qaeda.

“We’ve asked for access, obviously, to those folks,” the White House national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon told ABC News Sunday referring to bin Laden’s family.

He also called upon Pakistani officials to provide Washington additional intelligence it might have gathered from the bin Laden hideout.

Donilon said the White House had put together a special task force to comb through the captured data and that it would work under Obama’s direction to pursue any leads the information yielded.

“The CIA is describing it to us as the size of a small college library,” Donilon said. But he would not say whether the data indicated any imminent threats to the United States.

While declining to comment on the specifics of the raid, Donilon said that the world view was that the raid was justified.

“The messages that have come back to us from around the world, and I study this fairly closely, is that this was a just action, that in fact this was a just action against a man who had committed murder, not just in the United States but around the world.”

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)