Huma Aamir Malik, Arab News

KARACHI, 12 April 2004 — Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden may have fled Pakistan through Karachi or Gwadar.

Intelligence sources told Arab News yesterday that US and Pakistani intelligence agencies were investigating the case of a suspect, believed to be Bin Laden, who traveled from Dera Ismail Khan to Karachi in a truck. “He might have slipped out on a private ferry through Karachi or Gwadar port,” the sources said.

“Investigation is also under way about his destination. There are possibilities that he re-entered Pakistan’s Balochistan province and thence moved into Afghanistan,” the sources added.

They said US intelligence received reports some months ago that Bin Laden had been staying in Dera Ismail Khan. A tall and slim man along with two men with small beards traveled by truck to Karachi, the reports said.

The sources said Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri lived in Shawal in North Waziristan after they escaped from Afghanistan. Shawal is not far from Dera Ismail Khan. “Intelligence agencies have proof that Osama was in Shawal until June 2003,” the sources said.

A number of videotapes carrying images of Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri and broadcast by the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera channel were also shot in Shawal, the sources insisted.

The governor of the North West Frontier Province banned weapons in Shawal in August 2003. Bin Laden left the valley and was reportedly seen in the Pakistan-Afghan border area in mid-2003, the sources said.

In another development, a frontier tribe that has vowed to help a government drive against foreign fighters in the region has received anonymous threatening letters. The letters started arriving immediately after three sub-tribes of the Mahsud — the Yargulkhel, Ghanikhel and Dharikhel — formed their own lashkars, or militias, on Saturday to help the government drive in South Waziristan Agency. The elders of the Mahsud received letters threatening them with dire consequences for opposing the Al-Qaeda and Taleban in the area.

The lashkars searched 120 houses in Dhog, Zeri Lattha and Kaloosha areas, but did not find any terrorists, tribal elders of the three sub-tribes said.

The letters said that siding with the government in America’s war on terror and killing one’s own people through tribal lashkars was “un-Islamic”. The letters used abusive language to describe the tribal elders who took part in such lashkars.