Osama bin Laden received visits from Taliban leaders and wealthy Arab supporters while he was hiding out in a fortified compound in a Pakistani garrison town, it has emerged.
The revelation that the al-Qaeda chief had direct contact with his followers - and did not rely solely on messengers - came as a US-led task force urgently trawled captured documents and computer files for terror plots and information about extremists.
Which we should have been doing without anyone knowing...
British intelligence agents last week joined their US counterparts to sift through the material after repeated references to Britain were found in the haul retrieved from bin Laden's compound when US commandos killed him this month.
An Afghan Taliban commander, who has previously provided reliable information to foreign media, disclosed that he had visited bin Laden at the compound in Abbottabad.
He said that the Saudi terror chief also received sporadic visits from leaders of his al-Qaeda network, Taliban allies and fellow Arab fundraisers.
The disclosure will be crucial for Western intelligence chiefs as they try and assess bin Laden's role in international terror operations. They had initially believed that his contact with the outside world was conducted via messages on computer thumb drives. |