[ADN Kronos] Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, said Monday that the country's intelligence service believes Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is dead, but added they had no evidence. He was speaking at an international media conference in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. "The Americans tell me they don't know, and they are much more equipped than us to trace him," Zardari said. "Our own intelligence services obviously think that he does not exist any more, that he is dead. But there is no evidence, you cannot take that as a fact," he said. "We are between facts and fiction."I was of that opinion for awhile, too, until he started producing the occasional audio tape. Since he hasn't produced any vids, I'm guessing he's altered his appearance: ditched the turban, shaved the beard, now wears an ascot, a pith helmet, and a pince nez and answers to "Chauncy." Since he doesn't look like an Islamic Mastermind™, he travels openly, using his UAE passport in the name of "Abullah Aziz" in the company of fashionably but conservatively dressed Yemeni women. The only time he's really in the Pak-Afghan border area is when he's in his Secret Headquarters™ outside Chitral, meeting with Evil Minions™ and the occasional myrmidon.
Zardari was responding to reports that Pakistani Taliban in the troubled Swat valley said they would welcome Bin Laden if he wanted to visit the former tourist resort which militants control. "The question is whether he is alive or dead. There is no trace of him," said Zardari.It doesn't imply death. I could disappear not quite as easily tomorrow. "Not quite" because he's got a larger bank account.
The elusive Saudi-born Al-Qaeda leader was last seen alive in 2003. He is known to suffer from ill-health. If he is still alive, he turned 52 on 10 March.
I've heard that his kidney disease is a red herring, that actually he's perfectly healthy, though the last video tape he did, in 2001 or maybe early 2002, he looked prematurely gray and pretty peaked. But then, he'd just been kicked out of his Impregnable Fastness™ at Tora Bora.
Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the rugged border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. The US government in 2007 offered a 50 million dollar reward for his arrest.