November 4, 2001	Sunday	Shaba’an 17, 1422

LONDON, Nov 3: The British Broadcasting Corporation denied on Saturday having witheld information from police after receiving what was apparently a local London call from a person claiming to represent Osama bin Laden.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that London’s Metropolitan Police was unhappy that it had not been notified about the local call which suggests Osama’s organization was active in Britain.

But a BBC spokesman said the call last Thursday had not been local, and had in fact come from Afghanistan. “It just appeared that they were calling from a London number,” he said.

“Like other news organizations we did not ring the police as a matter of course,” the spokesman said: “We didn’t attempt to hide the information. It was reported on the BBC World Service, the BBC on line and The Times on Friday.”

The Telegraph report said the BBC had received a telephone call from “a London representative of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network”.

The BBC Arabic service had taken the call minutes before receiving a fax of an Osama statement urging Pakistanis to overthrow President Musharraf.

The caller had said he was speaking from abroad. But “a digital display on the telephone in the office where the call was taken revealed that it came from a London number”, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The BBC spokesman said it was not known why the display unit had indicated a London number.

“We attempted to verify the authenticity of the fax,” he said: “However, when we rang back we couldn’t connect. The time in the fax was also consistent with Afghanistan time.”

The police had been in contact, and BBC representatives would meet them this coming week, the spokesman said.—AFP