Khalid met Osama before arrest: Pak officials

ISLAMABAD: Top al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured recently in Pakistan, met Osama Bin Laden weeks before his arrest, proving that the elusive leader of the terror network was alive, officials said.
Following Mohammed''s arrest and his interrogation, Pakistani officials claimed that he had provided them with most solid proof that Bin Laden was alive.
"There is no doubt he is alive and well. We have evidence to show that he is alive," the officials were quoted as saying by a media report here.
The officials said they came to the conclusion that bin Laden was alive after indications that Mohammed met him last month. They, however, did not reveal whether the meeting took place in or outside Pakistan.
Media reports earlier said that Bin Laden was believed to be hiding in tribal areas located between the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. However, Pakistani officials said they believed that Bin Laden has certainly moved to a new hideout after Mohammed''s arrest.
"We believe that he has changed his hideout and moved away. He keeps shifting. He surely knows that Khalid Mohammed has been captured and will avoid moving to places he knew about", they said
It was Mohammed''s arrest that led to the information that some of Bin Laden''s wives and children lived in Iran, the officials said.
Mohammed -- along with his unidentified Arab associate -- has been handed over to the US.
Significantly, Mohammed, who deftly eluded US intelligence agencies since he was spotted in Karachi in September last, was captured after he was betrayed by a colleague, specially to grab the $25-million reward announced for Mohammed''s capture.
"I am not going to tell you how we captured him but Mohammed knows who did him in. He was shocked when he was arrested," they said.
Another significant information that has been obtained from Mohammed since his arrest was that Bin Laden''s deputy al-Zawahri slipped out of Pakistan into the Middle East some time back. Al-Zawahri, who is an Egyptian doctor, is not with Bin Laden at present. "They are not together," the officials said.
After being spotted in Karachi, Mohammed fled from there to another Pakistani town of Quetta in Baluchistan. He left Quetta last month after his Egyptian associate Asadullah was arrested by FBI-ISI in a joint raid. Mohammed then moved to Lahore and finally to Rawalpindi.
The officials said Mohammed has not revealed much but most of some of the valuable information came from a computer, CDs and notebook recovered from him.
"The information that has come by virtue of his arrest is immense. It reveals his contacts in the Philippines, Europe and the United States," they said.
From the details it was apparent that al-Qaeda operated from a complex e-mail system of cut and paste to prevent the leakage for information, while operating from different internet cafes.
"Even if we manage to pinpoint the cafes, it will be difficult to find the senders," the officials said.