KATHY GANNON ISLAMABAD: The courier who led US intelligence to Osama Bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan hailed from the Swat Valley, a one-time stronghold of Taliban fighters, Pakistani officials said Wednesday. The officials identified the courier as Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed. He and his brother Abrar were shot dead in the daring US Navy SEAL raid May 2 that also killed Bin Laden and two other people. The brothers apparently linked up with Bin Laden after they returned to Swat Valley from Kuwait, where their parents had immigrated. Swat is about 70 miles north of the city of Abbottabad, where Bin Laden had been hiding for about five years. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the real names of the two brothers, said they were from the Swat village of Martung. Ahmed, who is said to be in his early 30s, was first identified as Bin Laden's courier during Guantanamo Bay interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Sept. 11 mastermind, and Faraj Al-Libi, a top Al-Qaeda operative captured in 2005 about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Abbottabad. The captives said the courier was known by the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed Al-Kuwaiti, which he adopted because their parents lived in Kuwait. But US intelligence only found the courier last August, through a chance interception of a Ahmed's phone call. That set in motion the secret CIA search of the Abbottabad region, culminating with the May 2 raid and Bin Laden's killing. President Barack Obama's decision to keep Pakistan in the dark about the raid, infuriated the military and its intelligence agency. Relations sank to new lows. The US, however, has warned it will do the same again if it has solid intelligence on the whereabouts of any of five most-wanted figures. Topping that list is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's No. 2. Others are: Libyan Attiya Abdul Rahman, believed to be an operational chief; Pakistani Illyas Kashmiri, on whom the US place a $5 million bounty last month; Sirajuddin Haqqani, the military chief of the Taliban-allied Haqqani network and son of its leader Jalaluddin Haqqani; and the Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. The list was handed to Pakistani authorities during a hurried visit last Friday by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen. They warned then that they would again go it alone if they discovered the location of any of the five.
