Where are you Osama?

What’s the real story about the ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden?

A leaked French intelligence report said that Osama died of typhoid in Pakistan in late August. The intelligence leak is apparently from the Saudi Arabia spy agency which is trying to confirm the matter.

However the Saudi government has dismissed the report as speculative, just as the spy agencies of the UK and the US.

I believe that if the Saudis have found something as important as this, they would have gone running to the Americans as soon as possible. And then the matter would have been leaked - even before any confirmation - to an influential American broadsheet.

The matter would NOT have come out as it did - through the French regional daily L'Est Republican which quoted France's DGSE foreign intelligence agency.

I believe that the report about the death was leaked with a purpose. And it has all the bearings of a spy game. Perhaps the leak was instigated by some spy agency to get Osama to reveal his whereabout - after all he will now have to satisfy his followers that he is indeed alive!

As reuters reported today, the French leak "was designed precisely to flush the al Qaeda leader into the open, prompting him to release a new tape that might give a clue to his whereabouts and state of health".

It has been five years since Osama gained prominence after the Sept 11 attacks. Since then the rumours of his death have been plentiful. He was to have died of a kidney failure, others said it was a lung disease and the Americans believed their bombs had done him. Now we have this story about his typhoid!

No one knows where and in what shape he is in at the moment - Afghanistan is confident he is not in there while Pakistan denies he is sheltering there.

I, for one, am eager to see him in video - if this leak is indeed a muse by the western intelligence agencies to reek him out - at least to satisfy my curiosity.

For an overview on the whereabouts of Osama and why it has been difficult to trace him, read this excellent article which appeared in the guardian recently.