Abbottabad, July 13 : The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) organised a fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad town, where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding, in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaeda leader’s family, a British newspaper’s investigation has found.
The bin Laden house in Abbottabad
As part of extensive preparations for the US raid that killed bin Laden on May 2, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, The Guardian reports.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency for co-operating with American intelligence agents, the report said.
The plan was conceived after US intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaeda courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer, the report said.
DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to prove that the family was present, the report said. It is not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, the report said.
-Agencies