Taliban: Bin Laden Was in Region Before U.S. Attack

A former Taliban diplomat said on Sunday Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, was in the southern Afghan province of Nimroz just days before U.S. forces launched a new operation to arrest him. Naseer Ahmed Roohi, a former diplomat in Afghanistan’s fallen hard-line government, said he had information from “reliable sources” that bin Laden had been in the Siakoh mountain range, straddling the southwestern Afghan provinces of Nimroz, Helmand and Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. “Bin Laden, along with a few companions, shifted to an unknown area, just days before the U.S.-led operation in the area,” Roohi told Reuters by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. Roohi’s statements came as the home minister of a Pakistani province accused some of the media of misquoting his remarks about unsubstantiated reports of the arrests of two of bin Laden’s sons in Afghanistan. On Friday, the home minister of Baluchistan, Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, said he had heard two of bin Laden’s sons had been wounded and possibly arrested in an operation on Thursday by U.S. and Afghan troops in the Ribat region of Nimroz, where Afghanistan abuts Pakistan and Iran. Full Story