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ISI sheltering Osama: Indian official

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence may be sheltering Saudi renegade and Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his family, a top Indian official contended on Wednesday.

"Osama, along with his family members, had been taken out from Afghanistan by ISI operatives when the United States-led global coalition launched its attack," the official, who did not wish to be named, told rediff.com

"His (Osama's) ISI protectors induced a smokescreen by saying that the Al Qaeda chief would die fighting for their cause in Afghanistan. However, the global coalition was perplexed when Osama disappeared with his family thereafter," the official said.

The terrorist mastermind, in early December last year, was in the North West Frontier province in pakistan, he asserted.

"Osama is critically ill and surviving on Indian medicines. These medicines are not available in Pakistan," he added.

The Osma tapes sent to Al Jazeera television were videographed by the ISI, he said.

Asked to substantiate how the government got this information, the official said right from the day Kabul fell and the Taliban regime of Mullah Mohammed Omar was ousted, "pro-Indian elements in the Northern Alliance got hold of astounding secrets".

Asked why in such a case the Americans were not cracking down on the military government of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, the official said: "Musharraf has been saying that to the best of his knowledge Osama is not in Pakistan. The general is playing safe by not ruling out the possibility of Osama's presence in his country."

That was why US military personnel had fanned out in Pakistan in order to ensure that the terrorist mastermind did not escape, he contended.

The official also referred to the fact that the Americans had abandoned their hunt for Osama in the mountains of Tora Bora

"Right now he (Osama) is being hidden by his ISI protectors in a series of safe houses in Pakistan. But the shroud of secrecy cannot last for long," he contended.

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