Osama bin Laden dead: Gen Pervez Musharraf admits 'rogue elements' may have helped bin LadenGen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's former military ruler has admitted that rogue elements of the country's intelligence service may have helped Osama bin Laden evade justice for years before he was shot dead by a US Navy Seals team.
Gen Pervez Musharraf's comments will reignite suspicions of a 'shadow' element operating within the ISI Photo: REUTERS
By Rob Crilly, Islamabad and Dean Nelson in New Delhi 3:37PM BST 12 May 2011
President Barack Obama has already demanded to know whether government or military officials knew of the al-Qaeda leader's presence in Pakistan.
Now, in the first high-level admission that bin Laden may have had a support network within the Pakistani military establishment, Mr Musharraf said: "As a policy, the army and the ISI are fighting terrorism and extremism, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. A rogue element within is a possibility." His comments will reignite suspicions of a "shadow" element operating within the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate to further the cause of Islamic extremists.
The links date back to the 1980s when Pakistani officers channelled arms to Jihadi groups battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan and continued as Islamabad armed militant groups to take on Indian troops in Kashmir.
American officials have been convinced of the existence of a "rogue" ISI of "retired and semi-retired" agents since the July 2008 suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, which killed 58 people.
They intercepted telephone conversations which convinced them that ISI figures had played a key role. At the time one senior US diplomat said then military ruler General Musharraf "simply cannot rein them in, he has no control over them." Pakistani officials denied the claims.
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American officials pointed to retired ISI officers such as Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, its former director, and other former agents like Colonel Sultan Amir Tarar, the legendary 'Colonel Imam' who helped raise the Taliban, and Khalid Khawaja, another former agent who became friends with bin Laden.
Both Khawaja and Col Imam were killed by a group led by Hakimullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban leader close to al-Qaeda, in April 2010 and January this year after they were accused of spying against his group for the CIA.
General Gul denies any role in helping protect bin Laden.
In October last year Interpol issued arrest warrants for two men believed to be serving officers in the ISI, and another retired official, for their roles in allegedly planning the 2008 Mumbai terror attack in which 166 people were killed.
Another warrant was issued for the arrest of Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, a terrorist leader close to al-Qaeda who is believed to have been trained by elite Pakistan Army commandos.
The suspects were named by David Headley, the American Lashkar-e-Taiba figure who has admitted carrying out reconnaissance missions for the Mumbai terror attacks.
Michael Semple, the EU's former deputy special representative to Kabul, and an expert on militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, said he believed a rogue ISI or military group with extremist sympathies would have had the ability to shield bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound.
"They would not have said to the police chiefs or army 'we are hiding Osama bin Laden.' They would have said 'Mr. Arshad [the al-Qaeda courier who bought the land and built the house] is a friend who has rendered great services to Pakistan, but does not like anyone entering his house. Please see that no one troubles his wives. You know these Pathans, they can be a bit funny,'" he said.
Ayesha Siddiqa, a political and military writer, said any conspiracy to hide bin Laden would have reached to the upper echelons of the spy service to ensure that finding the fugitive was never made a priority.
"It's not possible that it was just rogue elements – unless they are so well-connected and they had such a pervasive relations at all levels of the organisation, that no-one then decided to probe into what this strange house was," she said.
However, senior diplomats in Islamabad and some analysts point out that no evidence has yet emerged to prove a link.
Christine Fair, a counter-terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said Pakistan had no motive to shield the al-Qaeda leader since the terrorist network had declared Jihad on the country and its then leader General Musharraf in 2007.
"I'm not saying the ISI was not involved, but we have to be faithful to the evidence and speculation is not evidence. Saying 'someone must have known' is not evidence," she said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8509717/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Gen-Pervez-Musharraf-admits-rogue-elements-may-have-helped-bin-Laden.html
