Bin Laden Flees Caves

TORA BORA, AFGHANISTAN - Osama bin Laden escaped the embattled Tora Bora base to Pakistan 10 days ago with the help of tribesmen from the Ghilzi tribe, according to a firsthand account Wednesday by a senior Al Qaeda operative and Saudi financier. The American Christian Science Monitor newspaper yesterday reported that Abu Jaffar, who spoke from an Afghan village still sympathetic to bin Laden and his fighters, said several days later, bin Laden sent his 19-year-old, married son Salah Uddin back to act on his behalf. He is the only bin Laden family member inside the Tora Bora terror base. But the French news agency, AFP, said a US official, who sought anonymity, dismissed the report. “It’s highly unlikely. Or to put it another way, I think it’s wrong,” the official said. US officials believe he is in Tora Bora or nearby in eastern Afghanistan, although they acknowledge they do not know for sure. “Osama bin Laden travelled out of Tora Bora two times in this Ramadan holy month. He left to meet Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar about three weeks ago and stayed with him near Kandahar,” the paper quoted Mr. Jaffar as saying. “He left again just over a week ago and was headed to Pakistan, where he was helped across the border by Pashtun tribesmen.” It said this account of bin Laden’s movements was the first detailed evidence that the Saudi national has escaped the nightly US bombing raids on Tora Bora. It added that the account also matched earlier accounts of bin Laden’s movements from his arrival in the White Mountains two days before the departure of the Taliban from Jalalabad and his lengthy dealings with sympathisers in the Pakistani town of Parachinar. American and Afghan officials, who have been insisting that bin Laden is in Eastern Afghanistan, have sounded less certain in recent days about their own accounts of the movements of the world’s most wanted man. The interview with the Saudi financier and religious scholar, Mr. Jaffar, was conducted by an Arabic-speaking reporter and interpreter in a remote village at the base of Tora Bora. Jaffar had stayed in the village for one night, after his foot was blown off by a stray cluster bomb. He had stepped on the bomb after exiting his family’s cave amid heavy bombing to look for injured persons. He was traveling Wednesday with his Egyptian wife, a daughter, and a 13-year-old Yemeni orphan boy. The four, who had been brought four hours on foot from inside the embattled Al Qaeda base, intended to leave clandestinely in the morning for Pakistan. Jaffar, who traveled with bin Laden in a truck out of Jalalabad, says: “Osama is my good friend. My own son was working with his son Salah Uddin in Ghazni. “After Osama left 10 days ago, he contacted us inside Tora Bora to tell us that he was sending his own son to be with us there. His son traveled through Paktia province with 30 Arabs and 50 Afghan fighters. “Yesterday, Salah Uddin told me to leave, and he gave me money because I will likely need another operation on my leg.” During the interview, the Saudi financier, who studied in Cairo’s Al Azhar University, reached in his pocket and pulled out a wad of British notes to show that he had enough money for his travels. Jaffar says that most of the family of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor known as the right-hand man of bin Laden, have been killed by the US bombing. He says earlier reports - mostly Afghan - of Mr. Zawahiri’s own death had proved false. Only Wednesday, one of two senior Afghan warlords said that only bin Laden and his top 22 deputies should be brought to justice. “The rest will be able to go free,” says the regional security chief, Hazrat Ali, who has been working closely with persons he refers to as “US military advisers” on the ground. Ends