ISLAMABAD, 11 March 2003 — Pakistan’s chief intelligence agency, in an unprecedented briefing to foreign media, confirmed yesterday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he last met Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in December at an unknown location.
“KSM (Sheikh Mohammed) confirmed he met Bin Laden in December,” a senior Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) official told some three dozen foreign correspondents at ISI headquarters in the capital Islamabad.
However Khalid, who was captured in an ISI-led raid on a private home in the northern city of Rawalpindi on March 1, told interrogators that he did not know “the exact destination.”
“I don’t believe him unless he gives us the location,” the official said, questioning the credibility of Khalid’s revelations. Journalists were instructed not to reveal the names of the three ISI officials briefing them. A top intelligence official had told AFP last week that Khalid said he had met Bin Laden in November or December in a mountainous region.
“Khalid said he met Bin Laden late last year and the meeting took place somewhere in a mountainous region,” the official told AFP on Friday, as he denied other reports claiming a meeting between the two in February possibly in Rawalpindi. In yesterday’s briefing the ISI official also said that Khalid had handwritten letters on him which he said were from Bin Laden.
“He was carrying notes he claims are written by Osama Bin Laden.”
The ISI, which is leading counterterrorism operations in Pakistan with US assistance, believes Bin Laden is alive following information gathered from Khalid and Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, an alleged financier of the Sept. 11 terror attacks who was captured with him.
“From our intelligence gathering we feel that he is alive,” the official told the briefing. As a result of the wealth of information gathered from the pair, Al-Qaeda hunters were moving significantly closer to capturing Bin Laden, he said.
“Yes, progressively we are moving,” he said when asked.
“The main fact that KSM’s arrest was executed proves we’re in the right direction,” he said, adding that Bin Laden’s arrest was “the logical progression.”
He refused to say where the ISI believed Bin Laden was hiding, saying only that there was no clear indication he was in Pakistan.
