Islamabad, Jul 9: The global hunt for Osama bin Laden might have ended eight years earlier had a Pakistani traffic cop spotted the world's most wanted terrorist in a car he had stopped for over-speeding.
But a right-hand man of the the al-Qaeda chief quickly settled the matter and drove off.
Maryam, the wife of a Pakistani al-Qaeda operative, Ibrahim, has made a shocking revelation about how Osama bin Laden, once narrowly escaped unnoticed by police in Swat district.
“She said that the tall Arab (bin Laden) and his family were once stopped by a policeman in a bazaar in Swat. ‘They (including Bin Laden) were stopped for speeding by a policeman,” the Abbottabad Commission report quoted Maryam as saying.
But Ibrahim very quickly settled the matter and they drove away unnoticed, she was quoted as saying by the Express Tribune.
Ibrahim, his brother Ibrar and their family had been serving Bin Laden from the day he managed to sneak into Pakistan from neighbouring Afghanistan, according to the report.
The report reveals that Ibrahim's nine-year-old daughter, Rahma, once asked her father why “the uncle who lives upstairs (bin Laden)” in the Abbottabad compound never visited the bazaar.
Her father said: “He (bin Laden) was too poor to go out and buy anything”. Since then, Rahma referred to bin Laden as ‘Miskeen Kaka (poor uncle)'.
US Navy SEALs killed bin Laden on May 2, 2011 at his hideout in Abbottabad in Pakistan.
