WORLD: Osama 'spends his days watching CNN and surfing the Net'

The world's most wanted terrorist likely lives in Pakistan house, says analyst

Straits Times
Thursday, August 24, 2006

By Bhagyashree Garekar

Five years after orchestrating the Sept 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, leads a humdrum existence.

Picture him cooped up in an unremarkable house, tuned in to TV news, clicking the mouse as he surfs the Internet.

The fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is likely to find him in Pakistan's mountainous Chitral district, close to its border with Afghanistan, according to Mr Peter Bergen, a CNN terrorism analyst who has written two books on the Al-Qaeda chief.

"He leads a boring life," Mr Bergen, who also teaches at Johns Hopkins University in the US, told The Straits Times on Tuesday, in a phone interview from Atlanta.

"I think he is living in a house, not moving about very much...he cannot go out, he is a very recognisable person... Has two bodyguards, is spending a lot of time listening to the BBC radio or watching CNN.

"Perhaps, with an Internet connection. If you look at his statements, he is very well informed about current events."

But his intent is as deadly as ever.

A new CNN feature report -- based in part on one of Mr Bergen's books -- provides a chilling reminder that Osama has a fatwa or religious sanction to use nuclear weapons and kill "up to" 10 million Americans.

In the two-hour documentary, Mr Michael Scheuer, who once headed a Central Intelligence Agency unit tasked to hunt Osama, tells CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour that the Al-Qaeda chief has been given permission by an unnamed young cleric in Saudi Arabia to "use nuclear weapons against the United States...capping the casualties at 10 million."

The programme traces the transformation of a quiet, privileged child into a hatred-racked extremist through interviews with people who knew him.

Mr Brian Fyfield-Shayler, who taught English to an 11-year-old Osama in 1968 at a Jeddah school, revealed that he was a shy pupil, while his childhood pal Khalid Batarfi recounts Osama's fondness for Bruce Lee and cowboy Westerns.

Is the elusive Osama likely to mark his 50th birthday next March a free man?

"In a sense it is not surprising we have not been able to find him," said Mr Bergen.

"He's in Pakistan where the US military or Nato troops can't go. He is a secretive and paranoid individual, careful about his personal security for many years.

"He is not making obvious errors, he is not using the phone, there is no electronic intelligence on him.

"Secondly, people in his immediate circle are not motivated by money. The cash reward for bin Laden is US$25 million (S$39 million)," he said.

"There have been no takers."

Date Posted: 8/24/2006