[Daily Nation (Kenya)] A Pak commission investigating how the late Osama bin Laden... who used to be but now ain't...
lived undetected for years in the country has ordered the government not to repatriate his surviving family without its consent.
Pakistain took custody of the Al-Qaeda leader's two Saudi and one Yemeni widows and around 10 of their children, after US Navy SEALs killed him and flew off with his body from the army town of Abbottabad on May 2.
Pakistain has given CIA agents access to the wives but the commission's move is likely to delay their departure, after an official recently confirmed to AFP that the youngest widow, Amal Abdulfattah, could return to Yemen within days.
"The ministry of interior and ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) have been directed to ensure that the family of Osama bin Laden is not repatriated from Pakistain without the consent of the commission," the commission said.
The four-member panel, chaired by a supreme court judge, has the authority to summon anyone and a security official told AFP that bin Laden's family would be no exception. There is no timeline for it to complete its investigation.
"They will go back eventually but perhaps until such time that investigations are complete, they would want to talk to them as well," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"They can make demand and they will be given access," the official added.
The move is likely to disappoint Abdulfattah's family, who told AFP last month in Yemen that they expected her and her children home shortly.
The revelation that the world's most-wanted man lived in a garrison city just a stone's throw from a top military academy raised questions about complicity or incompetence within Pakistain's security services.
The discovery that bin Laden lived in Abbottabad, seemingly for five years, and the unilateral American raid have been described by critics in Pakistain as the military's worst disaster since Bangladesh separated from Pakistain in 1971.