On 10 September 2001, Osama bin Laden’s wives were ordered to pack one suitcase each. No one would say why, only that their husband wanted to move them and his youngest children away from Kandahar. His older sons were to join their father and other brothers at an undisclosed location. The only boy left behind was nine-year-old Ladin, a timid child who flinched at the sound of gunfire. He, the women and other children filed on to a corroding Soviet-era bus smeared with mud, setting off on a dirt track parallel to the Silk Road.



When the engine stops, you get off, Osama told them.

Three uncomfortable days later, they lurched to a halt on the outskirts of Jalalabad, a city in the north-east of Afghanistan, next to a dun-coloured fort surrounded by 4m-high mud walls and crowned with guard towers. The fort was a barracks for the al-Qaida training camp located at a nearby village, and Osama had grandiosely named it Najm al-Jihad, the Star of the Holy War. Surrounded by adobe huts set into a lunar landscape, it was dubbed “Star Wars” by Osama’s third son, Saad. Discarded ammunition boxes, food packaging and empty bottles of chemicals lay everywhere. Khairiah, the family matriarch, organised a clean-up.

The women pinned up woollen rugs as insulation and plumped thin foam mattresses with old clothes, inspecting the bedding for scorpions and snakes. Narrow alleys that connected the apartments to a tin toilet outhouse were swilled out, and in the rudimentary kitchen area someone fixed the water pump and got an old generator running. The women would cook on a traditional Afghan bukhar (open stove); the three nursing mothers were to have the best pickings. Osama’s 14-year-old daughter Khadija had recently given birth. Two years earlier, she had been married in a double wedding with her 12-year-old half-sister Fatima. Their husbands, two Saudi brothers in their 30s who both had wives and children already, were mujahideen fighters. Saad bin Laden’s wife, Wafa, also had a baby, as did Osama’s youngest wife, Amal.

Osama’s wives, whose religious conservatism meant they could not speak to the male guards, dissected every scrap of news they overheard about 9/11, which had taken place while they were on the road. In recent months, Kandahar had been awash with rumours about something called the “Planes Operation”, but no one outside Osama’s tight-knit core group knew any details.

The children fought over a battered Nintendo or scanned their father’s transistor for snatches of Madonna

Without any adult male relatives to protect them, only al-Qaida guards who could not enter the same room, the wives had been instructed by Osama to blow themselves up if the situation became critical. Even nine-year-old Ladin had a role. He was to lie on his back, staring up into the sky, scouting for enemy jets, as war with America now appeared inevitable.

At night they huddled under a blanket with a Kalashnikov and a stash of grenades, wondering what would befall those friends and family left behind in the cities, and when they would next see their husband and sons.

***

Until recently, Osama’s wives had lived with their husband in adjoining concrete huts at Tarnak Qila, an ancient fort in the desert south-west of Kandahar airport. Through interviews with family members who wanted to remain anonymous, and senior members of al-Qaida who have never spoken before, we were able to build a picture of the life they lived there, as well as in the months and years after 9/11. At Tarnak Qila, the wives shared a cordoned-off yard that they turned into a small allotment and where they reared rabbits and chickens. Sometimes, when the compound emptied of men, they had gathered there to uncover their faces, while the children remember fighting over a battered Nintendo or scanning their father’s transistor for snatches of Madonna.

But lately there had been dissonance. Many al-Qaida members had witnessed the screaming rows Osama had with Omar, the teenage son he had been training as his heir, who bore a striking resemblance to his father. Omar had never shared his father’s obsession with war, and after he learned of his father’s coming Planes Operation, he became determined to leave. He had gone to his mother, Najwa, pleading with her to come with him. But she had never disobeyed her husband, so Omar had slipped away alone. “[My father’s] violent path had separated us for ever,” he later recalled.

But by the end of August 2001, Najwa had a change of heart. With Omar’s words playing on her mind, she asked to return to her parents in Syria – an unexpected act of rebellion from a woman who had stuck by her husband’s side for 26 years and given him 11 children.

Son Omar with his wife Zaina.

Najwa had never intended to be a jihadi bride. Glamorous and beautiful, she was a Ghanem, from an old, cultured Syrian family, and had grown up in the cosmopolitan seaside resort of Latakia, where women wore bikinis. She had married Osama in 1974, when she had just turned 16 and he was still forging a reputation as a demon soccer player at his university, and for driving fast cars recklessly. She had been charmed by this doe-eyed boy, the 17th son of one of Saudi Arabia’s richest men, and also her cousin. Arriving as Osama’s young wife in Jeddah, she had reluctantly donned a chador and niqab, but underneath the black folds still wore lipstick and designer clothes.

Over the years, Osama’s demands had worn her down. His brothers’ wives remember her as downcast, drab and permanently pregnant. “[She] seemed almost completely invisible,” says Carmen bin Laden, the former wife of Osama’s half-brother Yeslam.

But Najwa never thought she would end up in a shack in Kandahar, wearing an Afghan burqa, cooking on a “one-eyed camping burner” and plugging the bullet holes in her hut with raw wool to keep out the bitter wind. “I never stopped praying that everything in the world would be peaceful,” she said later, “and that our lives might return to normal.”

Son Saad, who was killed by a drone in Pakistan in 2009.

It wasn’t just the Planes Operation that had finally convinced Najwa to leave. There was also the question of her husband’s new wife. Osama had taken other wives before. His second had not seen eye to eye with Najwa, and she and Osama later divorced. But the third, Khairiah, had been Najwa’s suggestion. Some of Najwa’s sons had been born with developmental problems – possibly exacerbated by the fact that their parents were first cousins. Two had hydrocephalus (water on the brain), and her third son, Saad, was autistic. But Osama refused conventional treatment for them, preferring to put his fate in desert remedies and the hands of God.

Najwa had sought help for her sons at a clinic in Jeddah, where she met Khairiah, a child psychologist, seven years older than Osama. Osama wanted to have as many children as possible “for Islam” and Najwa suggested Khairiah could help him achieve that, as well as assist with their sons’ education. Osama judged that she was perfect: the Prophet had decreed that men should wed “unmarriageable” women to enable them to share the joy of motherhood.

Khairiah eventually bore Osama a son, Hamzah, who went on to inherit his father’s religious fervour, while she forged a role as the extended family’s matriarch. It was in her room in Kandahar that everyone gathered to resolve disputes and discuss impending changes, or to lobby for an extra sack of rice, basic medicine or schoolbooks.

Osama’s youngest wife, Amal.

Unlike Najwa, Khairiah was devout, and had married Osama in 1985, when he was already well on the path to jihad. Osama’s fourth wife, Seham, was also deeply religious, claiming descent from the Prophet and holding a PhD from Medina University. She had worked as a teacher before she married Osama, in 1987, at which point she too set herself the task of having as many children as she could. Before 9/11, Seham’s hut in Kandahar had been the family classroom, complete with slates, chalk and secondhand exam papers purchased in the bazaar. The children remember how Osama would occasionally interrupt, conducting impromptu maths and English tests, with his children lined up in order of size.

Osama expected all his children to play their part in jihad. Rather than celebrating birthdays, the boys were videotaped brandishing weapons or visiting the scenes of battle. Daughters were married at the onset of puberty to mujahideen fighters twice their age, to expand al-Qaida’s sphere of influence.

Only Najwa fought to soften the children’s world and they were drawn to her, eager for the treats she procured, especially her radio on which they remember listening to American pop, and eating her improvised spaghetti bolognese – tomato puree mixed with a packet of Maggi noodles.

So it was Osama’s decision to marry a Yemeni teenager, 18-year-old Amal al-Sadeh, in June 2000, that transformed an unconventional family into a dysfunctional one. Shortly before 9/11, Amal gave birth to a daughter and Najwa walked out, taking her youngest children and one adult son whose disabilities made him dependent on her. As they drove away, headed for Syria, Najwa turned to see the rest of her family enveloped in the dust.

“My mother’s heart broke into little pieces watching the silhouettes of my little children fade into the distance,” she said later. Khairiah and Seham stayed, but froze out Amal.

Then came 9/11, trumping every other concern.

Osama bin Laden’s family tree

Bombs were falling all over Jalalabad in November 2001, when Osama bin Laden unexpectedly arrived at the women’s fort with his sons. Seham and Khairiah were ecstatic, murmuring prayers and thanks to the Prophet. But this was not a lingering reunion. Osama urged them to pack immediately. US forces and their Afghan allies were advancing, so he was heading for his olive farm in Melawa Valley, the gateway to Tora Bora, his base in the high mountains of north-eastern Afghanistan. Only his sons Othman and Mohammed would remain with him. Hamzah, Khalid and Ladin would be expected to take care of the women and youngest children; as the oldest male family member, older brother Saad would nominally lead the convoy, which also consisted of in-laws and grandchildren.

Osama departed, giving each of his sons a string of prayer beads and urging them to “stay strong and true to Islam”. He left behind suitcases containing clothes and gold coins. Dressed in tribal robes, his family would travel through the night and attempt to cross into Pakistan at a remote checkpoint, using documents provided by the Sudanese authorities during the time they lived there in the 90s. Their old Saudi passports were sealed in brown envelopes and hidden away.

***

By December 2001, war with America was raging across Afghanistan, and Osama was missing, last seen facing off a fierce US aerial bombardment at Tora Bora. America was determined to dismantle al-Qaida and remove the Taliban from power, and anyone connected to Osama or his movement was a target. Osama’s family, along with hundreds of fighters and their families, had reached Pakistan, but it was no longer a safe haven: Pakistan had recently signed up as a critical partner in President Bush’s “war on terror”. Al-Qaida desperately needed to find another bolthole, one that was secure and accessible.

The family had narrowly survived an ambush at the Pakistan border, and reached Karachi, where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, welcomed them. But he was not interested in being a chaperone. Emboldened by success, he was already busy plotting his next “spectacular”. He passed the babysitting job to the remnants of al-Qaida’s council, or shura, and in particular a Mauritanian religious scholar called Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed, Osama’s spiritual adviser and close friend.

Son Hamzah’s Saudi passport.

Mahfouz debated with his colleagues for days what to do with Osama’s family. CIA agents were closing in everywhere. US helicopters flew along the Pakistan border. He needed to escort his charges to somewhere that was completely off limits to America. They were among the world’s most wanted, and relatively easy to spot: tall, fine-boned Arabs, several of whom closely resembled Osama, and who spoke no local languages.

In the end, they reached an unlikely conclusion: send the wives and children of Osama bin Laden, leader of an outlawed Sunni militia, to seek asylum in Iran, the centre of Shia power.

Choosing to trust Iran appeared, on the surface, a foolhardy plan. The regime was unpredictable, mercenary and self-serving. But it shared borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, and had had no diplomatic relations with the US since the revolution of 1979. Tehran was also renowned for backing causes that antagonised its sworn enemies, America and Israel; in fact, there was a secret history of contact between Tehran and al-Qaida. Giving al-Qaida sanctuary in these uncertain times could strengthen Iran’s regional position and potentially shield it from future terror attacks.

In January 2002, George Bush included Tehran in his “axis of evil”. After this, Iran’s secretive Quds force, a clandestine division of the country’s Revolutionary Guard, led by Major General Qassem Suleimani, went out of their way to assist al-Qaida. They set up a refugee camp in the no man’s land just beyond the Iranian border with Afghanistan. Hundreds of families arrived in buses and beaten-up taxis, on foot, or by pony. Taliban guards barred the way to foreign aid workers, reporters and any other unwanted visitors, while smartly-dressed officials escorted approved families to Tehran.

Osama’s children and grandchildren in Abbottabad.

Among the al-Qaida families to arrive were Khairiah and a group of Osama’s children; Seham and her children had elected to stay behind in Pakistan. In Iran, they were guided by Saif al-Adel, al-Qaida’s military commander, to a remote farm east of Zabol.

Saad, a creature of habit who found every small change in his routine alarming, nervously asked their guide about their safety. He wanted to go home to his grandmother, Osama’s mother Allia, who lived in the exclusive Bin Laden family compound in Jeddah. But Saif reminded Saad that their Saudi citizenship had been rescinded long ago, and that Riyadh’s proximity to the Bush administration ruled out any rapprochement. Then someone suggested travelling overland to Turkey and crossing into Syria. But, Saif pointed out, according to reports in the Arab press, President Bashar al-Assad’s intelligence agencies had been cooperating with the US. Saif advised everyone to stay where they were and keep their heads down, which meant no phone calls.

The advice was of no comfort to Hamzah, who still carried the string of prayer beads his father had given him in the olive groves of Melawa, a moment so painful that he later wrote about it in a letter, saying he “remembered every smile that my father smiled at me, every word that he spoke to me and every look that he gave me.”

When Saif made it clear to the family that he was directly in touch with Osama, Hamzah wrote him a letter, later released by al-Qaida. Born into jihad, Hamzah had never known peace. Now that he was in Iran, he could see no future. “Tell me, Father, something useful about what I see,” he pleaded in 2002. “What has happened to us?”

Son Khalid, who was killed with his father in 2011.

A few weeks later, Osama, though in hiding and on the run, replied: “Suffice it to say that I am full of grief and sighs. Pardon me, my son, but I can only see a very steep path ahead.” He had a message for all the family: even though they had reached Iran, they were still not safe. “Security has gone, but danger remains.”

Shortly afterwards, a brutal roundup began in Iran. Osama’s family, Saif al-Adel, Mahfouz and other al-Qaida leaders were seized by Iranian government agents and secretly transported to the main Quds force training facility in Tehran. Located close to the former Shah’s Sa’dabad Palace, in the far north of the city, the site was officially called the Imam Ali University for Army Officers. They were housed in concrete barracks with box-like cells running along a central corridor. Outside was an alley and yard, facing 6ft-high walls topped with razor wire. Renovations and repairs were ongoing, suggesting hasty decisions had been taken to contain them. “Block 100”, as the Iranians called it, was windowless, with only narrow ducts beneath the eaves drawing in fresh air. “Perhaps this is the place where Iran is hiding its nuclear bombs,” Mahfouz remembers one of the arrivals remarking.

As days turned into weeks, the Bin Ladens’ paranoia grew. Their fears were well founded: the civilian government in Tehran had caught wind of the secret al-Qaida migration and now trumped the freewheeling Major General Suleimani by offering prisoners to Washington DC in exchange for diplomatic recognition and an easing of sanctions. The only thing getting in the way was President Bush and Dick Cheney’s obsession with toppling Saddam Hussein. Focused on an Iraqi invasion, having hyped Baghdad as al-Qaida’s mentor, the White House rejected Tehran’s proposal and with it the chance to detain the military and spiritual chiefs of al-Qaida, as well as Osama’s family. Had they accepted, al-Qaida would have been critically weakened.

From Kandahar to Tehran, with allies and enemies: the flight of the Bin Ladens, 2001-9

By 2007, Osama’s family in Iran had expanded, with the birth of several grandchildren, and they had been relocated to another building in the complex, this one called Block 300. Tensions with their hosts, terrible food and unsanitary conditions had taken their toll. Saad, 28, was by now the father of three children, a boy named Osama and two little girls. A few months earlier his wife, Wafa, had had another son who died because the Iranians had refused a hospital visit. Another shura member’s wife had also died for want of medical treatment; Khairiah suffered excruciating dental problems and walked with a cane.

As tensions reached breaking point, Mahfouz, who lived with the family, fought for concessions. Family groups were taken out on day trips by Iranian escorts to visit famous landmarks in Tehran, where they mingled with American tourists. Once or twice Osama’s sons and the shura members were taken to a sports complex in Elahieh. Saif al-Adel, who had a $5m bounty on his head in the west, swam lanes alongside foreign diplomats.

Osama’s grandsons pelted guards with stones, shouting, 'We have been illegally kidnapped and hidden in this secret jail'

A temporary rapprochement was reached during Ramadan in October 2007, when the Iranians took al-Qaida out for an iftar (breaking the fast) meal at a five-star restaurant in downtown Tehran. Osama’s sons reciprocated by inviting the officials to dine with them in the compound. The following Friday, a car arrived at Block 300 to pick them up, before speeding toward Tehran University. Osama’s sons were greeted by officials who led them through the security gates and around the back of a covered prayer hall into a small waiting area carpeted with prayer mats.

A roar rose up outside as a TV on the wall focused on rows of devotees, scholars, clerics and officials standing for the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The sons of Osama bin Laden were in a private room behind the Ayatollah’s pulpit, his personal guests at Friday prayers that were being broadcast around the world on Iran’s Press TV. A man gestured from the door, and the nervous young men got to their feet, transfixed by the rising clamour of voices crying out, “Marg Bar Amrika” – death to America.

***

The following spring, relations between the al-Qaida guests and their Iranian hosts soured again. This time the source of the problem was Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a portly Kuwaiti preacher whom Osama had manipulated into becoming his mouthpiece after 9/11; he was also married to Osama’s eldest daughter Fatima. As a result, Abu Ghaith had lost his Kuwaiti nationality and, now in custody, he went on a hunger strike, spending his waking hours writing what he described as his “book of regrets”, an embittered rejection of Osama’s jihad.

Abu Ghaith’s mania eventually caused the Iranians to snap. But when the guards tried to manhandle him, a full-blown prison riot exploded. Egyptian and Libyan al-Qaida brothers ripped up sheets and shattered wooden beds, setting fires, hurling petrol bombs made with secretly stockpiled heating fuel and daubing anti-Shia messages on the walls. Mahfouz remembers watching as Osama’s grandsons pelted guards with stones. “We have been illegally kidnapped and concealed in this secret jail,” they shouted, thumping the wall. “Our ongoing incarceration goes against international law.” They would rather be prosecuted than remain in this “living cemetery”, they said.

The Star of the Holy War fort in Jalalabad, to which Osama bin Laden moved his family in September 2001.

Hamzah vowed to sign up for the jihad. His mother, Khairiah, declared she would return to her husband’s side. Meanwhile, Osama’s 17-year-old daughter Iman wished to go to her mother, Najwa, in Syria. However, first someone had to escape to raise the alarm. Everyone hesitated. Despite the tough talking, they had all become fearful of the outside world.

Soon after, Fatima learned that Khadija, her favourite sister, had died in Waziristan giving birth to twins. One baby was also dead; the other, a girl, was critically ill. Fatima was devastated. Deep depression settled over the family compound.

In May 2008, Iranian officials arrived on a detente mission, carrying boxes of sweets and cakes. Saad bin Laden spotted that the gate had been left open and, speaking fast in Arabic, he ordered his nephews and nieces to make a run for it. They hurtled out toward the entrance, surprising the Quds force guards, who stood down, not wanting to fire on children. Soon they were joined by their mothers, who sat down by the main gate, through which they could see members of the public strolling by.

“We want freedom, we want human rights,” Mahfouz remembers the women chanting, remaining immovable for the next 36 hours. Confronted with a top-secret cache of al-Qaida hostages crying out for help, Major General Suleimani sent in ice-creams for the children and a lavish meal for the adults, served out on the gravel. But no one budged. Exasperated, the Iranians eventually sent soldiers dressed in black overalls and ski masks to beat the families back into Block 300.

Days later, Osama’s family was given 24 hours’ notice to pack. Since the Iranians could no longer control their al-Qaida guests, the family was moving. They were driven into the country’s central desert, to the historic city of Yazd. Their new home was a sand-coloured villa surrounded by a low mud-brick wall.

The Iranian escorts took rooms closest to the main gate. There would be no trips out, they said. Such privileges had been lost. But as the family members wandered around, one thing struck them: there were no security cameras at the rear. Hamzah volunteered to hop over the back wall. Khairiah vetoed it. At 19, he was too young. Besides, his wife, Asma, had just given birth to a daughter. Saad, the eldest son present, said he would do it. His siblings shook their heads in disbelief – he would never survive. But that night, Saad slipped over the wall into the desert night. He was determined to find his father in Pakistan and then rescue them all.

Son Hamzah, this year designated a ‘global terrorist’ by the US.

After Saad’s escape was discovered, Osama’s family were transported back to Tehran, where they found a new kind of prison waiting for them at the heart of the Quds force complex. It consisted of purpose-built apartments for each family, a school, mosque, football pitch, even a swimming pool. As a joke, they referred to it as the “Tourist Complex”. But with tall walls and motion censors, it was a more modern prison and from their rooms they could hear Quds force recruits training.

At the end of the first month, some of Osama’s sons were offered their first phone calls. Whisked to the Afghan border and given a Thuraya satellite phone – a location and device that were intended to confuse American eavesdroppers – they were ordered to say nothing about their precise location. They reached Omar bin Laden, Osama’s son who had left Afghanistan before 9/11 and was now living in Qatar with his British wife Zaina. Over the years, Omar and his mother, Najwa, had written to the International Red Cross and the United Nations in search of their family. Now, stunned, they got a call from the desert. Omar promised to help.

The phone party returned to Tehran, their spirits buoyed. But then came news from Pakistan. Saad bin Laden was dead – killed in a drone strike in Waziristan. That night, Osama’s grieving sons gathered. They had convinced each other that Saad had been reunited with their father, and now they felt hopeless.

***

On 21 November 2009, Mahfouz was deep into his late night Qur’anic reading when he heard a knock at the door. He opened it to find Iman, Osama’s daughter, now 18, requesting to see his daughter Khadija, her best friend. When they were alone, Iman took off a gold ring and handed it to her. “This was a gift from my father but now it’s yours,” Iman said, explaining that something was about to happen that would “hit the compound like an earthquake”.

Slipping off her niqab, Iman swaddled a doll as if it were a baby, and made her escape

The following morning, the al-Qaida women gathered in the yard for a special Eid shopping trip. Iman was chatty, and she and Khadija sat together on the bus that took them to Shahrvand, a western-style supermarket on Argentine Square, thronged with diplomats.

While Khairiah and Fatima bin Laden filled their trolleys, with excited young children trailing behind, demanding sweets, Iman pulled Khadija into the toy section. Weren’t they too old for this, Khadija asked? Iman grabbed a lifesize baby doll and took out some clothes she had snatched off a shelf elsewhere in the store. Khadija watched, stunned, as her friend changed into them, slipping off her black abaya and niqab, and transforming herself with an Iranian chemise, a pair of jeans and a colourful headscarf wrapped around her hair in the Iranian style. Then she swaddled the doll in a blanket as if it were a real baby, embraced her friend and set off. “What are you doing?” Khadija hissed. “What does it look like?” Iman called back, before vanishing into the crowd.

It took a few minutes for their Iranian escorts to realise she was missing, and then intelligence agents swarmed into the square. But Iman was too quick for them and had asked the first woman she saw with a phone if she could borrow it. She rang her oldest brother, Abdullah bin Laden, a Jeddah businessman who had rejected his father’s lifestyle back in 1995. Unable to believe he was talking to someone he had thought was long dead, he instructed Iman to run to the Saudi embassy. He would call ahead.

Back in the Tourist Complex, the family sat in silence, too frightened to be hopeful. For three days there was no news. Then, as Mahfouz and his family watched a local cable channel, a ticker tape ran across the bottom of the screen. Normally, it carried service updates or ads for local kebab shops. But this one was different. “Iman is fine,” it read. “She has come.”

The road to Jeddah: what happened next

Iman bin Laden was reunited with her mother Najwa in Syria in early 2010, after spending more than 100 days inside the Saudi embassy in Tehran. She now lives in Jeddah with several siblings, including Fatima; her mother often travels to Qatar where many other family members live, including Omar and Ladin.

In late 2010, Khairiah and Hamzah were released from Iran and headed for Osama in Pakistan. Khairiah was with her husband when he was killed in the May 2011 raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, but survived. Hamzah narrowly escaped and set out to become the new figurehead of al-Qaida; earlier this year, he was officially designated a “global terrorist” by the US. The 2011 raid also killed Khalid, Osama’s son by Seham.

After a year in Pakistani detention, Khairiah, Seham and Amal, who had all witnessed the killing of their husband, were deported, along with 11 children and grandchildren, to Saudi Arabia. Today they live in a compound outside Jeddah.

Mahfouz, who watched the news reports on Osama’s death from the Tourist Complex, finally escaped Iran in 2012 and returned to Mauritania.

• Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy’s book The Exile: The Flight Of Osama Bin Laden is published on 23 May by Bloomsbury at £25.