Osama's Wife Didn't Leave Compound for Five Years

CNN reports:

Osama bin Laden's wife has told interrogators she didn't venture outside the walled compound where the al Qaeda leader was killed for five years, a Pakistani military spokesman said Thursday.

The wife, who was wounded in the raid, said she lived in the compound in Abbottabad with eight of bin Laden's children and five others from another family, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told CNN. All of them have been in Pakistani custody since the pre-dawn U.S. commando raid Monday that killed bin Laden and they will eventually be returned to their country of origin, Abbas said.

The news came as Pakistan's armed forces acknowledged intelligence "shortcomings" after the world's most-wanted man was hunted down and killed in a city north of their capital. A military statement said an investigation would be launched, but warned that the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden has jeopardized its cooperation with American forces.

Abbas said he wasn't sure from the wife's questioning how long bin Laden had lived in the compound or whether he had ventured outside during the five-year period his wife described. He identified the wife as "Amal," but said he could not confirm her full name.

Amal al-Sadah, 29-years-old and originally from Yemen, is the youngest of bin Laden's five wives. The al Qaeda leader had a total of 20 children, and one of his adult sons was also reported killed in the weekend assault.

With a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, bin Laden turned out to have been living in a three-story home in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad -- about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Islamabad and a short distance from a leading Pakistani military academy. American critics have questioned how Pakistani officials could have missed the compound, and U.S. officials have said Washington did not give Pakistan any notice of the assault because they feared the word would leak.