Osama bin Laden bookshelf: Former al-Qaeda leader's pornography stash will not be released

Former al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden's "fairly extensive porn stash" will not be released to the public, a US official has confirmed.

The pornography collection that was found in bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, at the time of the US raid in Pakistan in 2011 will remain classified "due to the nature of their contents", Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), told The Telegraph.

"We have no plans to release that at this point in time," said Hale. "Due to the nature of the content the decision was made not to release it."

News of the pornography stash was first made public by Reuters in 2011 soon after the al-Qaeda leader was captured.

At the time, officials who chose to be anonymous, told Reuters that they did not know if bin Laden had acquired or viewed any of the material found.

Family man obsessed with the West

The documents seized at bin Laden's hideout revealed a soft side of the militant leader who was found to be specifically concerned about his wife and children.

Among one of the letters found included one where he wrote to his wife and said, reported The Mirror: "I know that you are in a psychological crisis, so I doubled my thinking to find a way out for you, so I ask God to speed up the resolution for you and to get us together on the shores of safety sooner and not later.

"You have to raise my children properly, and to watch them, and be careful of bad company for them, especially after puberty, especially the girls.

"As for you, you are the apple of my eye, and the most precious thing that I have in this world. If you want to marry after me, I have no objection, but I really want for you to be my wife in paradise."

Several dozen books on 9/11 conspiracy theories and radical Islam were found amongst hundreds of other materials seized at the al-Qaeda leader's hideout.

Two such books, included Bloodlines of the Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier and Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky.