Osama bin Laden: The Biggest Fish of Them All

• Share

(2 of 5)

The reports of the fighting in the southwest were intriguing for two reasons. Pakistani intelligence believes that members of bin Laden's family are hiding somewhere in eastern Iran. Moreover, Pakistani sources tell TIME that on the second day of his interrogation in a safe house in suburban Islamabad last week, Mohammed said he had met bin Laden in December somewhere in the desolate stretches of western Baluchistan, a wasteland inhabited mainly by armed smugglers. But the Pakistanis aren't sure how much credence to give the tale. "We've got some good leads from Mohammed," says a senior Pakistani intelligence officer, "but we can't pin Osama down to one place yet."

Still, bin Laden may at least be on the run, hiding in remote villages, communicating--almost certainly--only by sending messages by couriers, never talking on a satellite or cell phone. Mohammed, up to the day he was caught, was an operational leader of al-Qaeda, using his many international contacts and four languages to keep the terror network alive. He had moved to Rawalpindi from a base in Quetta that was raided by local police and FBI agents on Feb. 13. Mohammed and another man escaped by leaping from roof to roof. A third man was detained; he turned out to be Mohammed Abdel Rahman, the son of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric currently in a U.S. federal prison for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1995. After the son's arrest, the two missing men were traced to the house in Rawalpindi where Mohammed was eventually arrested. "We weren't sure we had the right man," said a Pakistani officer involved in the raid. "He wasn't at all like his photos; he seemed fat and droopy." But when Mohammed's fingerprints were checked eight hours later, the Pakistanis knew they had their prey. To the unconcealed delight of U.S. officials, the other captured man proved to be Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Mohammed was interrogated first by Pakistani authorities, who were anxious, says a source, that he might have been planning an assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf. A senior Pakistani intelligence officer denies that Mohammed was tortured. "We used temperature discomfort and sleep deprivation," says this officer, who claims that no more was needed. "Khalid was talking. He was cooperating. He wasn't defiant at all." A few days later, according to Pakistani sources, Mohammed was flown in a U.S. Chinook helicopter to the American air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, north of Kabul. U.S. sources will not confirm that Mohammed was taken to Bagram, but an Afghan general tells TIME that he saw Mohammed taken off the helicopter, hooded and manacled. He may or may not still be there. A Jordanian official has told TIME that at the end of last week, Mohammed was being held and questioned in Amman, Jordan. U.S. sources will not comment on the claim.