ISLAMABAD: The Director General (DG) Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa on Thursday dismissed the allegations appearing in a US-based daily newspaper that former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha had information about slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan.
Allegations in the story of Carlotta Gal,NYT of 19 Mar baseless, ridiculous.Nothing new/credible, all speculations already proven false
— AsimBajwaISPR (@AsimBajwaISPR) March 20, 2014
On Wednesday, the New York Times published excerpts from a book by its former Afghanistan correspondent Carlotta Gall claiming that the former ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha knew of Osama’s presence in Abbottabad.
In her upcoming book “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014,” Gall claimed that the special desk was operated independently led by an officer who handled Osama bin Laden.
Gall, who covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for The New York Times from 2001 to 2013, also claimed that former president Pervez Musharraf and his top commanders were aware of al Qaeda’s plan to assassinate Benazir Bhutto and that the ISI did not cooperate with the military in the 2007 operation against the Red Mosque militants.
The Pakistani diplomats in Washington said that the claim that the ISI kept and protected Osama bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad contradicts the official US assessment of the situation
“Since the episode, senior US officials and leaders have on a number of occasions stated on record that they have seen no intelligence linking the government of Pakistan and any of its agencies with OBL’s presence in Abbottabad,” said a spokesperson for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.
“To still believe otherwise and to resurrect the issue through unnamed sources and unconfirmed reports does not deserve attention,” the spokesperson added.
