Bin Laden hunters a step behind

[cal04]

IT had been more than two years since Pakistani intelligence last picked up the trail of the world's most wanted man, one of its top officers said in a hasty meeting at a secret rendezvous point. "At one stage in early 2003 we thought we were quite close to him," murmurs the anti-terrorism official, whose high rank and sensitive work meant that he would only speak if his identity was not revealed.
"But a few hours before the operation could start in the border terrain near Afghanistan, he moved out."

Since then, nothing. Osama bin Laden's vanishing act continues to baffle the world's biggest military power and its allies, four years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. While the smoke was still rising from the rubble of the Twin Towers, US President George W. Bush vowed to track down the al-Qaeda chief dead or alive. Weeks later, US-led forces invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, the hardline Islamic regime that harboured bin Laden.

Many officials believe he was trapped late in 2001 by the ferocious US bombing of the Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanistan, but he managed to slip out of the region, possibly across the porous border into Pakistan. Thousands of people have since been arrested around the world, many confined to Guantanamo Bay without charge, but none has been able to provide the crucial nugget of information.

The Saudi, who has acquired poster-boy status in parts of the Muslim world, is also credited with inspiring al-Qaeda offshoots to carry out new atrocities, including the March 2004 Madrid bombings and this year's July 7 suicide attacks in London. Also wanted by the US is bin Laden's right-hand-man Ayman al-Zawahiri, who appeared on a new video aired 10 days before the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The tape also showed one of the London bombers. Even a $US25-million ($32.4-million) reward offered by the US has yielded no visible results, while Pakistan's military ruler, President General Pervez Musharraf, said late last year that the trail had "gone cold". Inevitably, the focus remains on Pakistan, an enthusiastic ally in Mr Bush's "war on terror" and the site of almost all the key al-Qaeda captures since 9/11.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16543764%255E1702,00.html

[notadmblnd]

1. and Wyle E. Coyte was always a step behind the Roadrunner too

what's their point!

[Old and In the Way]

2. Has anyone really seen him since Tora-Bora?

That "appearance" before the election last year, notwithstanding.