The world's most wanted man

Thousands of troops from countries including Britain, America, Afghanistan and Pakistan search relentlessly for him. Dozens of CIA agents have no other mission than working day after day on his capture.

Yet eight years after the 9/11 outrage on the Twin Towers of New York and the Pentagon in Washington, no one has come close to laying a finger on Osama Bin Laden.

Ever since that day when nearly 3,000 people were murdered, America has wanted the leader of al Qaeda dead or alive. Some believe he is ­travelling from village to village in the lawless regions of the Afghan-Pakistani border; others that he is holed up in the mountains there. Among American pursuers his most common nickname is “Elvis” because there have been even more supposed sightings of him in recent years than Presley and because there is more chance of finding the late king of rock ’n’ roll alive.

But there is a compelling argument, put forward by a respected American academic, that Bin Laden was killed eight years ago. Professor David Ray Griffin, who has written authoritative books on the 9/11 attacks, believes the US has kept the Bin Laden myth alive to bolster the war against terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What is truly astonishing is that despite an army of investigators, a practically limitless budget and an immense £15million bounty on his head, so little is known about what has actually happened to Bin Laden.

Since 2001 there does not appear to have been a single genuine sighting of this distinctive man with his hunched back, pallid skin and greying beard. Some observers believe video and audio tapes of him that pop up on the Al Jazeera satellite TV network are fakes.

During that time a number of Bin Laden’s senior lieutenants have been killed or ­captured – not least close associate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, pictured this week by Red Cross photographers in Guantanamo prison camp looking in much better shape than the dishevelled captive seized in Pakistan in 2003. But none begins to compensate for the failure to snare Bin Laden.

The CIA employs between 50 and 100 agents and special operations officers in Pakistan. Known as “The Cadre”, this group’s sole remit over the past eight years has been to find and kill Bin Laden and his henchmen.

The hub of The Cadre is in Islamabad but much of its on-the-ground operations are run from a bleak base in the border province of Waziristan. Life there is so tough that it is known as “Shawshank” because of its close resemblance to the brutal prison in the film The Shawshank Redemption. There, in blistering heat, agents spend days at a time poring over aerial ­photos, intercepted phone-calls and titbits from their network of spies.

“It’s not just looking for a needle in a haystack,” said one former agent. “It is looking for a needle in a mountain of haystacks.”

Some 7,500 miles away from Afghanistan another 2,500 service personnel continue the hunt for Bin Laden at Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas. They operate most of the remote-controlled drone aircraft flying constantly over Afghanistan. It is said that 36 of these lethally armed drones – called Predators and Reapers – will be hovering over Iraq and Afghanistan at any one time.

From the glut of raw information gathered over the years, the CIA’s best guess is that Bin Laden is moving from village to village in the badlands of Waziristan. He is believed never to use a telephone and confines his communications to a monthly message via a courier. Bin Laden and his entourage of wives and bodyguards pay large bribes to ensure villagers’ silence.

When he arrives in a new village he will sit and talk to the tribe leader after which, according to the custom of the local Pashtun people (the biggest ethnic group in the border region) he is a guest of the village and must be protected.

It is claimed that local police often know where Bin Laden is staying but that if an informer ever dared claim the £15million reward, they would not live long enough to spend it.

Earlier this year, after spending months analysing satellite images, two American academics from the University of California claimed Bin Laden was hiding in the city of Parachinar in north-west Pakistan, in one of three walled compounds within it. They said his urban existence amid thousands of people made him less vulnerable to a surprise military raid and provided easy access to electricity – essential for the dialysis it is known Bin Laden requires for his diseased kidneys.

But another theory is that Bin Laden died in the Tora Bora caves in eastern Afghanistan (once his headquarters and which US and British troops attacked in December 2001) and that there is a ­conspiracy within American government to pretend he is still alive.

In his new book Osama Bin Laden: Dead Or Alive? Professor David Ray Griffin argues that Bin Laden died soon after the 9/11 attacks.

“There’s much evidence which points to the conclusion that Osama Bin Laden is no longer alive,” Prof Griffin insists. “As one analyst said last year, we have had no credible intelligence on Bin Laden since 2001.”

He believes Bin Laden was hiding in the Tora Bora caves when US forces bombed the complex in 2001. This attack may well have jeopardised Bin Laden’s dialysis treatment.

What is known is that on Christmas Day 2001, Pakistan’s Observer newspaper carried a report of Bin Laden’s funeral, saying he died “a natural and quiet death”. One unnamed Taliban leader said he’d seen Bin Laden’s face before he was buried in “his last abode” in the Tora Bora mountains. “He looked pale but calm, relaxed and confident,” said the source.

W hat happened next, according to Prof Griffin, was that although US officials initially admitted Bin Laden might be dead, speculation was rapidly quashed. There were many motives but primarily America needed Bin Laden alive in order to launch its war on terror. Bin Laden’s existence also helped President Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004.

The most convincing evidence for Bin Laden’s death is that after the Tora Bora battle of December 2001, the number of intercepted conversations dropped to nothing. “Bin Laden’s voice had been detected regularly in radio transmissions in Tora Bora,” says Prof Griffin. “These intercepts came to an end suddenly and permanently.

“The absence of any intelligence about Bin Laden whatsoever – given spy satellites and the size of the reward offered for him – provides further reason to conclude that he is no longer with us.”

More evidence comes from eye­witness accounts of Bin Laden’s appearance in 2001. “People reported that he looked near death,” says Prof Griffin. “He was frail and looked much older than his 44 years.”

Discovery of a grave containing Bin Laden’s remains would of course bring speculation to a close. But this is unlikely if the report of his death eight years ago in the ­Pakistani paper is to be believed. “It is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of Bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave,” it said.

Prof Griffin has no doubts. “The major pretext for the war in Afghanistan is the expressed need to ­prevent Osama Bin Laden and his followers attacking the West again. This pretext would be removed by convincing evidence that Bin Laden is dead. Such evidence exists.”

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