Bin Laden rumour has world press in a tizz

For what would have been a massive scoop, it began in unspectacular fashion. During a telephone interview with a Tehran radio station yesterday, a Pakistani political commentator dropped, almost as an aside, the earthshattering bombshell that Osama bin Laden had been captured. Murtaza Poya, deputy leader of the Islamic Awami Tahrik party, confidently informed the station that Pakistani intelligence agents and US troops had picked up Bin Laden inside Pakistan. Unfortunately, Mr Poya’s qualifications for giving the interview rested more on his fluent Farsi than his knowledge of the hunt for the world’s most wanted man. With the Pakistani authorities rushing to kill off any suggestion that Bin Laden was within their borders, let alone had been caught, journalists there quickly established that the “exclusive” was as reliable as recent sightings of Elvis or Shergar. But in an extraordinary example of the jumpiness pervading the world’s newsrooms, the rumour was racing around the globe within minutes. Full Story