US News

Bin Laden’s trophy wife No. 5 protected evil hubby

It was Osama bin Laden’s fifth, youngest and prettiest wife who charged at Navy SEALs in a desperate bid to save him during the raid on their Pakistan mansion, it was revealed yesterday.

Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, 29 — making her 25 years younger than bin Laden — was so alluring to him that he made her his fourth wife, even while planning the 9/11 attacks from his Afghanistan terror camp.

Erroneous initial accounts of what happened Sunday said a woman, identified only as a bin Laden wife, was killed when he used her as a human shield.

But yesterday, when Fatah’s name and passport photo surfaced, officials said she was wounded in the leg — and it happened when she rushed, unarmed, toward the SEALs.

Fatah and at least one of the three children she had with bin Laden were among the 10 people who were later seized by Pakistani officials after the SEALs left.

Fatah, also known as Amal al-Sadah and born in Yemen in 1982, was 15 when she was introduced to bin Laden by her brother, who had fought Soviet troops alongside him in Afghanistan. They married around 2000.

To satisfy a Muslim four-wife limit, bin Laden divorced one of the four women he had married earlier.

He was quoted as saying multiple marriages are best: “One is OK, like walking. Two is like riding a bicycle: it’s fast but a little unstable. Three is a tricycle, stable but slow. And when we come to four, ah! This is the ideal. Now you can pass everyone!”

Three months after the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden wrote a will ordering his wives not to remarry. “Don’t consider marrying again, and devote yourself to your children and guide them to the right path,” said the Dec. 14, 2001, document, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper.

He also apologized to his 24 children for neglecting them–saying he had “responded to the need for jihad” — and told them not to join al Qaeda.

Fatah revealed in a 2002 interview that she and bin Laden lived in a cave for two months after the US bombing of Taliban hideouts began in October 2001.

She said they reluctantly left for Pakistan with the help of one of his many sons. “He always wished to die there and told me if he ever leaves Afghanistan, he will leave to meet God,” she said.

Bin Laden’s other wives fled to Syria, but Fatah ended up with him at the Pakistan compound.

Britain’s Evening Standard newspaper said the SEALs intended to take her with them but there was no room because one of their helicopters crashed.

Pakistani officials said after being treated at a high-security military hospital she would be sent to Yemen — and would not be available for US questioning.

One other woman, possibly a bin Laden nurse, and eight children ages 2 to 12 were also taken into custody.

andy.soltis@nypost.com