Bin Laden 'alive and well' in mountains

Pakistani intelligence officials claimed yesterday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged leader of al-Qa'ida who was captured last week, told his interrogators that Osama bin Laden was alive and well, and hiding in mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The captive, who is accused of masterminding the 11 September atrocities and is now under relentless questioning by US intelligence agents at a secret location, has said that he met Bin Laden recently, a Pakistani intelligence official told Associated Press. The official, who claims to have participated in his early interrogation, said the meeting either took place in Pakistan's south-western Baluchistan province or on the Afghan border.

The latter would mean that Bin Laden is in a wild, mountainous area, which is being scoured and bombed by US troops and aircraft based at Bagram air base, near Kabul. According to some reports, he is changing his location nightly, protected by only a small number of guards.

Other claims about his presence in Pakistan appeared in The New York Times yesterday, which reported that papers, CD-Roms and a computer seized during the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed showed that the two men met some time last month, possibly in Rawalpindi.

"There is now no doubt that he is alive and well," a senior Pakistani official said. "We have documents that show he is alive and in this region."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi in a joint raid by CIA and Pakistani agents – intriguingly, at the home of an activist of the Jamaat-e-Islami religious party, which has close links to Pakistani intelligence – and handed to the Americans.

Pakistan's Information Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, categorically denied yesterday that Bin Laden could be in hiding in Pakistan. He also denied suggestions that Bin Laden was hiding in the wider region.