WASHINGTON, Feb 18: US investigators have obtained billing records for a satellite telephone used by Osama bin Laden and his closest associates in the late 1990s and are using them to Al Qaeda cells around the world, according to Newsweek magazine.

The report in the weekly’s Monday issue said the suspected mastermind of the Sept 11 attacks and his top lieutenants, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and Muhammad Atef, stayed in touch with the outside world using a Compact-M portable satellite telephone.

Billing records from 1996-1998 for the phone were obtained by US investigators probing the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the magazine said.

And a country-by-country analysis of the bills provided US authorities with a virtual road map to important Qaeda cells around the world.

According to the report, the largest number of outgoing calls — 238 out of 1,100 — went to Britain, particularly to Osama associate Khalid al-Fawwaz, who is in British custody.

The second largest group of outgoing calls was to numbers in Yemen, Newsweek reported.

Some calls went to a Yemeni phone number that investigators now believe was used in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa.—AFP