New York: Former ISI chief Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, according to a report, knew of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan. The US also had direct evidence that the ISI chief knew of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad according to a report by New York Times. It also said LeT founder Hafiz Saeed was in regular contact with the slain al-Qaeda chief.
“The information came from a senior US official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha’s or one about him in the days after the raidâ€, senior journalist Calotta Gall wrote in the article titled ‘What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden’ adapted from “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014,†to be published next month.
The report added that the haul of handwritten notes, letters, computer files and other information collected from Bin Laden’s house during the raid revealed regular correspondence between Bin Laden and a string of militant leaders “who must have known he was living in Pakistan, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a pro-Kashmiri group that has also been active in Afghanistan, and Mullah Omar of the Talibanâ€.
Gall writes that Saeed and Omar are two of the ISI’s most important and loyal militant leaders. Both are protected by the agency. Both cooperate closely with it, restraining their followers from attacking the Pakistani state and coordinating with Pakistan’s greater strategic plans. “According to one inside source, the ISI actually ran a special desk assigned to handle Bin Laden. It was operated independently, led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior. He handled only one person: Bin Laden,” the article claims.
Reacting to the NYT report, Pakistani intelligence sources dismissed it as “baselessâ€.