Woman obsessed with Osama, wanted to play his wife

Dubai: It was a dream for Salma Nazneen that ended with a rude shock. The Qatar-based Pakistani woman, who wanted to meet Osama bin Laden and play his wife in a film, said she was astonished to find that the Al-Qaeda leader was holed up at a stone's throw from her sister's home in Abbottabad.

Nazneen even spent a month with her sister late lastyear and would look at the house where bin Laden was found, wondering if someone actually lived there.

"My sister and her children always thought a smuggler lived in that house," Nazneen has said.

Nazneen, who lives with her husband in Doha, said she read a book on bin Laden's life eight years ago and turned a fan of him overnight.

"Such a charismatic man he was that he would have actually fought to end terrorism from the world...I would have told him so had I met him," she said.

Nazneen, who is originally from Mansaira, was so obsessed with bin Laden that she contacted a Pakistani film producer, Syed Noor, asking him to make a film on bin Laden's life and cast her as one of his wives.

Syed Noor, she claimed, responded with a no saying that he would need Pakistan and US government's approval to make such a film.

Nazneen, however, did not give up on meeting the Al-Qaeda leader and even stayed in Pakistan a few years ago looking for contacts in Al-Qaeda so she could meet him.

"I was really shocked when I learned that he was holed up right across from where my sister stayed in Abbottabad," she added.