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ISI Knows Laden Whereabouts, Wants to Use as Leverage over US against India

Eminent military historian Stephen Tanner has said that Pakistani intelligence agency ISI knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden but is keeping his location undisclosed and it wants to utilize al-Qaida chief as leverage over the US, for it’s cautious of America’s closer ties with India, said media reports.

“We got to make a deal with Pakistan because I’m convinced that he (bin Laden) is protected by the ISI,” Tanner, the author of ‘Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban’, was quoted as saying.

The historian claimed that the ISI knows where Laden is hiding but is not prepared to reveal it, said reports.

Tanner was interviewed by CNN, in addition to other experts, for a blog post on the channel’s website called ‘Whatever happened to bin Laden’, said report.

He also noted that Laden was unlikely to be captured anytime soon and suggested that the ISI wants to keep him as leverage over the US because it is wary of Washington’s closer ties with New Delhi, said reports.

Without Laden, the ISI fears, the US would lose interest in Pakistan, reports said.

“I just think it’s impossible after all this time to not know where he is. The ISI knows what’s going on in its own country,” Tanner said. “We’re talking about a 6-foot-4-inch Arab with a coterie of bodyguards.”

Thomas Mockatis, another expert and the author of ‘Osama bin Laden: A Biography’ was also quoted on the CNN blog suggesting that killing bin Laden would probably not be the best idea.

“Killing bin Laden would not be a good thing,” Mockatis says. “He’s already a hero. Killing bin Laden would just create one more martyr.”

He recommends dismantling of terror infrastructure, terming it more important than capturing Laden who have been allegedly sighted in Pakistan and is believed to be in North Waziristan, constantly slipping back and forth from the Af-Pak border, reports said.

An associate professor of international security studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School in Massachusetts, William Martel, even suggests that it would be better if bin Laden would not be captured as the debate on how the Al Qaeda chief should be treated after his capture would create a firestorm, said reports.

“Do we read him his rights; do we run him through a military tribunal or civilian courts?” Martel was quoted as saying. “Capturing him would pose more problems than not.”

(Based on internet reports)

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