08th December 2009
Taliban detainee in Pakistan claims to
have information about Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts in
January or February of this year.
His
claims cannot be verified, but a leading American expert
says his account should be investigated. The detainee
claims to have met Osama Bin Laden numerous times before
9/11.
He claims that in January or February he
met a trusted contact who had seen Bin Laden about 15 to
20 days earlier in Afghanistan. "In 2009, in January or
February I met this friend of mine. He said he had come
from meeting Sheikh Osama, and he could arrange for me
to meet him," he said.
"He helps al-Qaeda people coming from
other countries to get to the sheikh, so he can advise
them on whatever they are planning for Europe or other
places. "The sheikh doesn't stay in any one place. That
guy came from Ghazni, so I think that's where the sheikh
was."
The province of Ghazni in eastern
Afghanistan has an increasingly strong Taliban presence.
Large parts of the province are no-go areas for
coalition and Afghan forces. He says he declined the
invitation to travel to meet Bin Laden because he was
afraid of compromising his security, if he was captured
by the police or the army.
"If I had met him, the first question
they would have asked would be where have you met him,
and I would have had more problems and it would have
created problems for them [al-Qaeda]."
According to a Pakistani security
official the detainee has close ties with leaders of the
Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and was involved in
kidnapping and fund-raising operations in the
north-western city of Peshawar.
The detainee, who cannot be named for
legal reasons, said that militants were avoiding
Pakistani territory because of the risk of US drone
attacks. Pakistan at this time is not convenient for us
to stay in because a lot of our senior people are being
martyred in drone attacks," he said.
We were given access to him twice in the
past month. He spoke at length and in detail, painting a
picture of close co-operation between the Taliban and
al-Qaeda. A Pakistani interrogator was listening as he
spoke.
His account suits Pakistan, which
maintains that Bin Laden is not on its soil, though
Britain and the US think otherwise.
But US counter-terrorism expert Bruce
Riedel, a former CIA analyst, says his story is "a very
important lead, that ought to be tracked down." "The
entire Western intelligence community, CIA and MI6, have
been looking for OBL [Osama Bin Laden] for the last
seven years, and haven't come upon a source of
information like this.
"So, if it's true - a big 'if' - this is
an extraordinary and important story," he said.
"We know Osama Bin Laden is alive. We
know that he is living somewhere in the badlands along
the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. "What's
extraordinary about this story is we have someone who
has come forward and said, really for the first time, 'I
met with Osama Bin Laden and I had the opportunity to
met him again in the recent past'."
Active and healthy
The detainee claims that Bin Laden is
well, though there has been speculation for years that
he was in poor health. "What my associate told me was
that he is fresh, and doing well," he said. He also
claims the al-Qaeda leader is still active, training
instructors who in turn train others. "The information I
have is that he provides training to special people.
There are training centres in homes, and all the
teachers are first trained by the Sheikh. Then they go
and teach the classes." The detainee's account raises a
lot of questions - among them, what were his motives for
talking. Western interrogators may have lots of
questions they would like to ask, but so far the
detainee has been out of their reach.
