London, Sept 29: Pakistan has freed a senior al-Qaeda commander Amin al-Haq, who served as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Amin al-Haq, who escaped from Afghanistan with the al-Qaeda leader in 2001 and went on to become a key financial aide, was detained in Lahore three years ago by Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI.
A senior security source in Peshawar, where he had been held, said the ISI had passed al-Haq on to the police before he was released earlier this month.
“Amin al-Haq had been arrested mistakenly, therefore, the police failed to prove any charge of his association with Osama bin Laden and the court set him free,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran reporter in Peshawar, who has interviewed senior al-Qaeda figures including bin Laden, said Amin al-Haq's release was a puzzle.
“They could only have released him with the say so of America or if maybe there really was no evidence or he was not that important,” he said.
As the security coordinator of the Black Guard, the elite unit charged with protecting Osama bin Laden, he would once have been in close contact with the al-Qaeda leader, according to The Long War Journal which has profiled the Afghan-born doctor.
Amin Al-Haq, who is thought to be 51, has a long history with armed groups.
He fought Soviet forces during the 1980s and was part of the Afghan delegation which travelled to Sudan in the 1996 to bring bin Laden to Afghanistan. The US froze al-Haq's assets after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
In the weeks that followed, he fought at the Tora Bora cave complex, where the senior al-Qaeda leadership was holed up and helped them escape into Pakistan.
In 2007, The Daily Telegraph picked up his trail close to Tora Bora, where international forces were once again battling al-Qaeda.
Local tribal leaders said he was injured in a bombing raid and smuggled back across the border to Pakistan, where he was arrested little more than four months later.
