Sources: Suspect May Know Bin Laden's Location

Captured this week in Pakistan, a nephew of a reputed al Qaeda mastermind may know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, sources said Thursday.

The suspect, Ali Abed al Aziz, is a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and a cousin of Ramzi Youssef, who was convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the sources said.

I'm not certain (God knows these folks use enough aliases to confuse any sane man), primarily because Abd al-Aziz al-Jamal is an Egyptian (former Egyptian Islamic Jihad military commander and aide to the late Mohammed Atef), whereas Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a Kuwaiti/Pakistani/Iraqi depending on who you talk to.

The name of the nephew was reported yesterday as Ali Abdulaziz, which sounds suspiciously Saudi despite the Pakistani claim that all of the folks other than Khallad who got rounded up were Pakistanis. It is primarily the nationality that I would recommend refraining from udulation until we know for sure.

Here is the original AP Yahoo! story where Abdulaziz was first mentioned:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030501/ap_on_re_as/us_al_qaida_arrests&cid=516&ncid=716

One further thing about bin Laden's location is that I have long suspected that he high-tailed it into Iran right after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed got busted. He doesn't strike me as stupid enough to hang around in Baluchistan long enough to get captured and most of the claims of his or his sons' captures (all of which are from MMA officials) have in all honestly struck me as an attempt to draw the US into a wild goose chase in Baluchistan while bin Laden snuck across the border.

Then there's this article in the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/battle/la-war-probe28apr28,1,2726383.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dheadlines

It clearly states that our good buddy Ayman al-Zawahiri is in Iran, which would mean that he's left Bangladesh. As a general rule, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri stick pretty close together, so if al-Zawahiri is in Iran that is also the probable location of bin Laden. Given that the ayatollahs are already harboring a substantial portion of the groups as well as at least one terrorist training facility within their borders, the idea that they would take Osama in isn't too big of a stretch.

a nephew of a reputed al Qaeda mastermind may know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden

The interrogators will need to be more specific about which part of Osama bin Laden they want to locate.

At this point, I'm so numb to the issue of whether Osama is alive or dead that it will take a photograph of him being captured to really attract my interest. I think he's dead, and if he's not, he's hiding so well that he isn't really in charge of anything.

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