Sudan: Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had millions of dollars stashed in Sudan and wanted most of it to be used to fund jihad, according to a handwritten will released Tuesday.
The late 1990s document was among a tranche of newly declassified letters seized by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011 when they descended on Bin Laden’s hideout in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad and killed him.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released dozens of documents, including one they said was bin Laden’s will. Written in Arabic on a single piece of lined paper, the signed will states bin Laden had about $29 million in Sudan, and that much of it had come from his brother.
“I received twelve million dollars from my brother Abu Bakir Muhammad Bin (Laden) on behalf of Bin Laden Company for Investment in Sudan,” he wrote, according to the ODNI’s translation of the document.
“I hope, for my brothers, sisters, and maternal aunts, to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah.”
Bin Laden sheltered in the Sudanese capital Khartoum for five years in the early 1990s. The ODNI would not comment on what happened to the purported hoard. The documents also show a growing schism between bin Laden’s lieutenants and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and said he was planning a worldwide media campaign for the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
AFP