PESHAWAR, March 5: Documents, CDs and a computer recovered after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s arrest indicate that Osama bin Laden may be alive, according to knowledgeable sources.

The evidence also indicates that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had a meeting with Osama last month, the sources told Dawn on Wednesday.

“There is now no doubt that he is alive and well,” the sources said, asking they not be named. “We have evidence that shows he is alive.”

The sources said that based on the information gleaned from the documents, Pakistani officials believe that Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor who is thought to be the brains of Al Qaeda, slipped back into Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan in October 2001, and hiding for some time in the Middle East. But Al-Zawahiri and Osama are not together, the sources said.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed fled from Karachi last September after another key Al Qaeda operative, Ramzi bin Al Shibh, was captured, and went to Quetta. He left Quetta last month after one of his team members, identified as Asadullah, an Egyptian by nationality, was picked up during a joint FBI-ISI raid. He moved first to Lahore, then to Rawalpindi, the sources said.

The sources believe that Osama has almost certainly moved since Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s arrest. “We believe that he has changed his hideout and moved away,” the sources said. “He keeps shifting. He surely knows that Khalid has been captured and will avoid moving to places he (Khalid) knew about.”

The sources said he would not reveal how Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured, but suggested that he had been betrayed by someone inside the organization. There was a $25 million reward for his capture. “I am not going to tell you how we captured him, but Khalid knows who did him in.”

He “was shocked when arrested,” and had refused to talk.

The information the Americans and Pakistanis now have have come from “a computer, CDs and notebooks,” the sources said. “The information that has come by virtue of his arrest is immense. It reveals his contacts in the Philippines, Europe and the United States.”

They said that Al Qaeda operated by way of a complex system and used cut outs to protect the leakage of information even in the event of a bust. The operatives used internet cafes and cut and pasted messages using a series of e-mail addresses. “Even if we manage to pinpoint the cafe, it is difficult to find the senders,” the sources said.

They said the authorities also knew where Osama bin Laden’s wives and children were.

Opinion

Editorial

Accruing more debt
Updated 28 Sep, 2023

Accruing more debt

We are in midst of the worst, longest economic crisis because of lavish lifestyles of powerful interests.
Israeli normalisation
28 Sep, 2023

Israeli normalisation

OVER the past few weeks, there have been many reports prophesising the impending normalisation of ties between Saudi...
Kandhkot tragedy
28 Sep, 2023

Kandhkot tragedy

THE tragic incident that unfolded yesterday in Sindh’s Kandhkot tehsil, leading to the deaths of at least nine...
More desecration
Updated 27 Sep, 2023

More desecration

Attacks on the Islamic faith are not motivated by an attachment to free speech but by raw hatred.
Worrying remarks
27 Sep, 2023

Worrying remarks

THESE are ominous words from Gwadar. Maulana Hidayatur Rehman, chairman of the Gwadar Haq Do Tehreek, has warned ...
Justice or vendetta?
Updated 27 Sep, 2023

Justice or vendetta?

ONE wonders whether all pretence of the state as a democracy has been whittled down to a point where it has simply...