Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html
Report: Bin Laden Already Dead
Wednesday, December 26, 2001
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Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, thePakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.
"The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said.
Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.
About 30 close associates of bin Laden in Al Qaeda, including his most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members and some "Taliban friends," attended the funeral rites. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to the "great leader."
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) --Pakistan's president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease.
"I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a ... kidney patient," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on Friday in an interview with CNN.
Musharraf said Pakistan knew bin Laden took two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. "One was specifically for his own personal use," he said.
"I don't know if he has been getting all that treatment in Afghanistan now. And the photographs that have been shown of him on television show him extremely weak. ... I would give the first priority that he is dead and the second priority that he is alive somewhere in Afghanistan."
U.S. officials skeptical
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In Washington, a senior Bush administration official said Musharraf reached "reasonable conclusion" but warned it is only a guess.
"He is using very reasonable deductive reasoning, (but) we don't know (bin Laden) is dead," said the official, who requested anonymity. "We don't have remains or evidence of his death. So it is a decent and reasonable conclusion -- a good guess but it is a guess."
The official said U.S. intelligence is that bin Laden needs dialysis every three days and "it is fairly obvious that that could be an issue when you are running from place to place, and facing the idea of needing to generate electricity in a mountain hideout."
Other U.S. officials contradicted the reports of bin Laden's health problems, saying there is "no evidence" the suspected terrorist mastermind has ever suffered kidney failure or required kidney dialysis. The officials called such suggestions a "recurrent rumor."
Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in central and southwest Asia, said Friday that he had not seen any intelligence confirming or denying Musharraf's statements on bin Laden's condition.
The United States has said that bin Laden is the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed about 3,000 people.
Hunt for bin Laden
The United States launched its campaign in Afghanistan after the country's ruling Taliban refused to turn over bin Laden.
Earlier this week U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he believed bin Laden and Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar were inside Afghanistan but "we are looking at some other places as well from time to time."
Rumsfeld noted there were dozens of conflicting intelligence reports each day and said most of them were wrong. Most of the reports are based on sightings by local Afghans that cannot be verified.
There are reports that bin Laden and his convoys have been sighted recently by a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle.
A senior Defense Department source said the lack of credible information about the two was so severe that many officials believe the U.S. would catch bin Laden or Omar only through pure luck, or an "intelligence break" -- essentially one of their associates turning them in.
Top CIA analysts who track bin Laden and Omar have been asked for their best assessment on the two men's whereabouts. That has led to a variety of thoughts, placing bin Laden in Afghanistan, in Pakistan or Iran, on the open ocean onboard a ship, or headed north through Tajikistan or Uzbekistan -- if he is still alive.
The videotape seen worldwide several weeks ago of bin Laden talking about the September 11 attacks was made in Kandahar. He then apparently disappeared -- possibly going north to Tora Bora.
Franks said there was evidence bin Laden was in Tora Bora but he gave no indication of when that might have been. In October, intelligence officials thought they had bin Laden pinned down to a 10-square-mile area in the eastern central mountains of Afghanistan.
Two senior military officers told CNN it would not have been hard for bin Laden to change location several times because vast areas of Afghanistan are virtually unseen by the U.S. military, and he would have been even harder to spot if he moved without his telltale large security contingent.
Even before the war, bin Laden moved around frequently, making it difficult for the United States to determine his location and launch an attack against him
United States President Barack Obama announced late Sunday that the al-Qaeda leader had been killed in a US military attack on a residence in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad north of the capital, Islamabad.
US reports claim that bin Laden had been living in a house near a Pakistani military base since 2005.
Speaking to the international Urdu daily Ausaf, the former officials said the terror mastermind had been killed elsewhere, questioning the reason for which the media had not broadcast the whereabouts and the manner of his death.
Citing the interviewees, who included General Mirza Aslam Beig, a former chief of Army staff, the newspaper said, “It is a fact that Osama bin Laden has been killed, but he has not been killed in Pakistan and this is evident in interviews with the locals and eyewitnesses.”
They cited remarks by Haidar Ali -- one Abbottabad local, who owns a house near the alleged bin Laden residence and had closely witnessed the US operation.
They quoted Ali as saying, “If Osama bin Laden was in the house, us and neighbors would surely be notified of his presence. The house belongs to a Pakistani of Pashtun decent and has been built in 2005 and was resided by a number of his family members.”
The interviewees also asked whether it was possible that the operation has not even claimed the life of one American trooper given the al-Qaeda militants' “special skills and commando training.”
They added that it was not possible that bin Laden had been living close to a military base as well as Pakistan's garrison city of Rawalpindi for five years without the country's military and intelligence apparatus being informed.
“Bin Laden has been killed somewhere else, but since the US intends to extend the Afghan war into Pakistan and accuse Pakistan and obtain a permit for its military's entry into the country, it has devised the scenario (about his death).”
Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said in a 2007 interview following a failed assassination attempt on her, that bin Laden has been “murdered” years ago.
