OBL is DEAD ?

[Mark Gobell]

Could be disinfo. He may have been dead for a lot longer than August 2006.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/09/23/france.binladen/index.html? section=cnn_world

Rumors swirl over bin Laden's fate

POSTED: 12:27 p.m. EDT, September 23, 2006

Story Highlights• France's Chirac, U.S. intelligence downplay report that bin Laden is dead
• Report is contained in leaked French defense ministry documents
• Saudi source tells CNN bin Laden is ill with a water-borne disease
• U.S. intelligence officials say al Qaeda leader is likely hiding in Pakistan

How did Osama bin Laden become the world's most wanted terrorist? CNN's Christiane Amanpour goes "In the Footsteps of Bin Laden,"

Saturday at 10 p.m. ET.

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has a water-borne illness, a Saudi intelligence source told CNN on Saturday, a report that conflicts with an article in a French newspaper saying that the man who has been hunted by the United States for the past five years is dead.

The Saudi intelligence source told CNN's Nic Robertson that there have been credible reports for the past several weeks that bin Laden is ill, but there has been no word of his death.

The questions came in response to the publication of a report in the French regional newspaper L'Est Republicain on Saturday.

The article cited a confidential French foreign intelligence document dated September 21 in which a source said the Saudis had received confirmation that bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan on August 23.

Speaking in Compiegne, France, following meetings on trade with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Jacques Chirac said he would investigate the leak of the confidential documents, and said that the information in them has been in no way confirmed.

"I was rather surprised to see that a confidential note from the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security) was published and I have asked the minister of defense to start an investigation immediately and to reach whatever conclusions are necessary," Chirac said. "Secondly, speaking of the source of the information itself, this information is in no way confirmed."

U.S. intelligence officials said Saturday they could not confirm the report suggesting that bin Laden might be dead, and White House spokesman Blair Jones added: "We have no confirmation of that report."

A senior administration official told CNN's John King that nobody he spoke to had any independent information on the report, and that CNN would be well advised to treat it with skepticism at this point.

"The official stressed that they certainly have not developed any intelligence worthy of putting it on the president's desk," King said.

Laid Sammari, the journalist who wrote the article, told CNN in a telephone interview he was confident of the authenticity of the confidential document cited in his report.

He said the only thing the Saudis were trying to confirm was the burial place of the al Qaeda leader, before making an official announcement.

Pakistani officials also said Saturday they have no information that confirms bin Laden's death. Friday, U.S. President George Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in a joint news conference that the hunt is still on for the leaders of al Qaeda.

The terror group was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington.

CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said he is skeptical of the suggestion that bin Laden might be dead, saying it was not something the Islamist Web sites would keep quiet about.

He also noted that rumors of the al Qaeda leader's demise circulate every few months.

The report in L'Est Republicain said the Saudi secret service first got the reports of bin Laden's death on September 4.

CNN is trying to confirm the reports with Saudi officials in Washington, D.C., and in Saudi Arabia.

An official with the French defense ministry confirmed that an investigation into the leaked documents was already under way.

The last message from bin Laden was an audiotaped post on an Islamic Web site on June 30. The CIA confirmed the voice giving the message was that of the al Qaeda leader.

In the message, bin Laden names Abu Hamza al-Mujaher as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's successor as leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The last videotaped statement from bin Laden was aired on October 29, 2004 on Al Jazeera.

CNN Producers Katie Turner in London and Pam Benson in Washington D.C. contributed to this report

[Mark Gobell]

This is the original report in L'Est Republicain, in French.

http://www.estrepublicain.fr/zoom/2006092300222348.html

This is the Babel fish translation:

Usama Bin Laden would have died The Saoudi secret service would have acquired the conviction that the Al-Qaïda founder died. If it were confirmed soon, information would fall à.pic for American president George Bush strongly abused by the surveys to less than two months from the elections. Information that we reveal today results from a note of confidential information classified "defense" emanating from the Directorate-General of the external services (DGSE). The French secret service transmitted it Thursday September 21 to the President of the republic, to the Prime Minister, to the Minister of Interior Department and Defense. We deliver the contents of it to you in-extenso.: "According to a usually reliable source, the Saoudi services from now on would have acquired the conviction that Usama Bin Laden died. The elements collected by the Saoudi indicate that the chief of Al-Qaïda would have been victim, whereas it was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, of a very strong crisis of typhoid having involved a paralysis partial of his lower limbs. Its geographical insulation, caused by a permanent escape, would have made impossible any medical care. September 4, 2006, the Saoudi services of safety collected the first information making state of its death. They would wait, to obtain more details, and in particular the exact place of its burial, to announce the news officially ". The information collected by the DGSE on the death of Ben Laden was considered to be sufficiently reliable so that it is decided to inform the highest French authorities of them. A first note had been written and diffused on last 19 September. It was entitled: "the Saoudi services seek to confirm the death of Usama Bin Laden". Before the disclosure of this news, that made more than three years that the American persons in charge for the counter-terrorism had not received credible information. It is necessary to go up with the arrest of one of the Al-Qaïda leaders, Walid Mohamed Ben Attash in April 2003, to find a trace of Ben Laden. It had been established then that this last had met the spiritual chief of Jihad, three months before, in the province of Khost in Afghanistan. These last months, the American commandos, who were in load of the tracking, concentrated their research at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the north of the tribal areas. I.e. in the area not controlled by the authorities of Islamabad and where the army never ventures. It should be said that the soldiers Pakistani recorded enormous losses as men when they had tried to occupy the ground in 2004 and 2005. 644 dead In spite of the enormous means deployed by the Americans for the capture of Ben Laden, research is remained vain. And this, in spite of the use of satellites, drones and means of listenings sophisticated. Thanks to the arrest of several members of nebula Al-Qaïda, the services American know that Ben Laden leaves its masks little. It would leave only during the night and when the cloud cover is thick. And thanks to his local troops, the Saoudi billionaire has a very good knowledge of the area which offers an infinite number of cushy jobs. In spite of this impossible research, the American administration never wanted to give up "It is our principal priority", declared on last 13 September the Cheney vice-president. While the Senate resolved 200 million dollars to recreate a cell of the information especially intended to track that which it September 11, 2001 to dare to defy America. And whose organization asserts the commission of 16 attacks, made 644 having died and 2700 wounded, perpetrated in the world in the name of Al-Qaïda since September 2001. An organization become a mark, a label, an ideological reference to the name of which thousands of fanatics throughout the world are ready to pass to the terrorist action in an autonomous way. Like the authors of the attacks from July 7, 2005 in London.