"He's hiding in Pakistan in the northern tribal areas above Peshawar", Schoren claims
Pakistan ISI officials know where’s Bin Laden - Aljazeera
6/2/2005 7:30:00 PM GMT
"He's hiding in Pakistan in the northern tribal areas above Peshawar", Schoren claims
The Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may not be knowing where would al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden be hiding within Pakistan's territorial limits, but ISI officials are aware about his whereabouts, according to CIA officer Gary Schroen, who spearheaded U.S.' search for Osama in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's tribal regions would explode upon news of the death or capture of Bin Laden, which makes President Musharraf afraid of the internal political consequences of finding Al Qaeda chief that he doesn't even want to know where is he, Schroen said.
"I think the philosophy of the Taliban, this fundamentalist view, is popular there. So Bin Laden, I think, strikes them as heroic. He fought a jihad against the Russians, and he's bloodied America's nose time and again," the CIA veteran said, adding that regardless of how much reward money America offers, "Bin Laden would not be captured and handed in".
Schroen claims that Musharraf wasn’t helping the U.S. forces to seriously crackdown on the Bin Laden. "He's hiding in Pakistan in the northern tribal areas above Peshawar - an area that is rugged, hilly, heavily forested. The U.S. government and the U.S. military are not authorized by the Musharraf government to enter there unilaterally. As long as he stays in place, it is going to be almost impossible to find him," Schroen was quoted by The Daily Times as saying.
Schroen said earlier that he had developed two plans to capture or kill Osama (in 1998 and then a year later), but both were turned down by the CIA.
He said "I can only speculate, but it is based on almost 20 years of dealing with the Pakistani military and ISI officers. I think at some level, probably the colonel level, there are officers probably in ISI who know where Bin Laden is, "A man of that caliber (Bin Laden) could not be hidden out for that many years without word getting out in the community. So, I think some people probably know within ISI and the military." according to the paper.
Yesterday President Pervez Musharraf said that Pakistan is handing over Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the recently captured Al Qaeda suspect to the U.S.
Al Libbi, a Libyan, didn’t provide the Pakistani authorities with any useful information about Osama bin Laden, President Musharraf said.
In Washington, a U.S. State Department spokesman said that the U.S. government is talking to Pakistan about Libbi, but it has not discussed anything about his extradition.
Libbi, was caught in Karachi on 2 May after a gunfight.
He is accused to have attempted to assassinate President Musharraf twice.
Libbi, described as No 3 man in al-Qaeda's network, did not reveal anything that indicated he had contact with Laden, President Musharraf said.
