Matchmaker reveals how he found the right girl for al-Qaida leader – Yemeni woman who is now in Pakistan's custody

It was early in September 1999 when Rashad Mohammed Saeed Ismael, a Yemeni sheikh in his early 20s working as a preacher and a leading member of al-Qaida in Kabul, received the most important phone call of his life. Osama bin Laden had decided to marry for the fifth time and had charged Rashad, one of his closest aides, with the important task of finding him the right woman.

The aide listened carefully as Bin Laden described to him his desired spouse: "She must be pious, dutiful, young [preferably aged 16-18], well mannered, from a decent family, but above all patient. She will have to endure my exceptional circumstances."

Luckily he knew just the right girl: Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, a 17-year-old daughter of a civil servant and a former student of his, was, according to Rashad, "the perfect match" for the al-Qaida leader, then 44.

Now, just over 10 years later, Sheikh Rashad, who describes himself as a staunch supporter of al-Qaida in Yemen, is fighting for Amal and her daughter, who are currently being detained by Pakistani authorities, to be brought back home in the wake of Bin Laden's death.

"We have a strong practice in Islam called irdh [family honour]," he says. "When a woman like Amal is widowed, it is a duty upon all Muslims to look after her and ensure her safety. All the Yemeni people want her to come home."

Others fear that if Amal is brought back to Yemen she may be handed over by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to the Americans for further questioning.

Any attempts by the US to hurt Amal or any of Bin Laden's family, Rashad says, "will cause an explosion between the west and the Islamic world. Women are not warriors. America knew that Bin Laden never used women to participate in his battles."

In 2000, Rashad returned to his home town of Ibb, a verdant city in Yemen's south-west, to make the necessary arrangements. He went to the woman first, explaining to her who Bin Laden was, what he was like, and how he moved from one place to another pursued by the Americans. After she "dutifully accepted" Bin Laden's offer, a dowry of $5,000 was wired to Amal's family, triggering a bout of pre-marriage celebrations in preparation for the young woman's departure to Afghanistan.

Bin Laden's matchmaker, Amal and her elder brother left Yemen for Pakistan, first to Karachi, and then to Quetta, where they stayed for a few days until Bin Laden sent some guards to pick her up and bring her into Afghanistan. The wedding ceremony, which took place in Kandahar, then the heart of the Taliban's operations, was an all-male affair carried out in traditional Yemeni fashion. The men sang and danced and a lamb was slaughtered at Bin Laden's feet as distinguished guests recited poetry and sung him songs written for the occasion.

Today Rashad believes the fate of Bin Laden's family, especially his wives, is as, if not more, important to al-Qaida than Bin Laden's death.

"We [al-Qaida in Yemen] received the news of Bin Laden's death with happiness because we knew it was his aim to die as a martyr at the hands of the Americans. But the question of his relatives is one of women's honour, something we consider untouchable."

With Bin Laden's death, some officials believe the Yemen-based affiliate, which is autonomous and more internationally active than the old core of al-Qaida in Pakistan, may now represent the gravest threat to the US.

Yemen's weak central governance, rugged terrain, and widespread poverty has gifted militants significant elbow room over the past few months in tracts of the south-east where they have been able to thrive despite a barrage of airstrikes and raids by Saleh's US-trained counter-terrorism forces.

But despite the group's own near daily assaults on Yemeni security forces, local experts insist that al-Qaida remains a marginal group with a few hundred hardcore fighters hiding out in the mountainous provinces of Marib and Shabwa.

Last Thursday the US launched a missile strike from a drone on a village close to Rashad's village, incinerating a car along with two alleged al-Qaida militants. US and Yemeni officials later claimed that Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual guru of Al-Qaida in Yemen, had been the intended target but that he evaded the missile.

Rashad says he anticipates further US strikes on Yemeni soil in the near future.

"The policy of the Arab world rulers has lost them the sovereignty of their countries. All constitutions and laws have been sacrificed," he says.

"The Americans will continue to bomb us because Saleh's regime no longer controls anything and will use anything to gain support and stay in power."

When asked about the size of the organisation in Yemen and its support base, Rashad replied: "Al-Qaida is a complicated web that has no end or beginning.

"This is not an organisation with application letters and a database. Those who want to join al-Qaida receive standard religious lessons and basic military training, after that they're considered members."

• This article was amended on 26 May 2011 to give a clearer transliteration for a word for honour rendered phonetically in the original story as ardth.