In April 2001, the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) holds its annual public meeting in Pakistan. Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan attends the meeting as an honored guest. Accompanying Khan at the podium is Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, another Pakistani nuclear scientist who had met with Osama bin Laden the year before (see 2000). He will meet with bin Laden again shortly before 9/11 and advise him on how to build a “dirty bomb” (see Mid-August 2001). [Asia Times, 6/4/2004] French journalist Bernard Henri-Levy, the author of a book about Pakistani militant Saeed Sheikh, will later claim in the Wall Street Journal that Khan was a secret member of LeT. [Wall Street Journal, 2/17/2004] The US will ban LeT after 9/11 because of its involvement in a string of attacks against India (see December 20, 2001). LeT is considered linked to al-Qaeda, and bin Laden addressed the annual LeT meeting by phone in some past years. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the founder and leader of LeT, has publicly declared that Pakistan should share its nuclear technology with other Islamic nations, a position also advocated by Khan. In 2002, he will claim that people loyal to his organization “control two nuclear missiles.” [Asia Times, 6/4/2004]
2007: ISI Head Allegedly Allows Radical Militants to Use Abbottabad, Pakistan
In 2007, when General Nadeem Taj becomes head of the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, he allows “a number of radical ideologues associated with jihadist groups to use Abbottabad as a transit hub.” One such person is Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, head of Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistani militant group sometimes linked to both the ISI and al-Qaeda. This is according to a London Times article published shortly after bin Laden is killed in Abbottabad in 2011 (see May 2, 2011). [London Times, 5/8/2011] Prior to heading the ISI, Taj was the commandant of the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, which is only 800 yards from the Abbottabad compound Osama bin Laden hid in starting around late 2005 (see Late 2005-Early 2006). Taj started that job in April 2006. [News (Islamabad), 4/24/2006] On September 29, 2008, it will be reported that the US is intensely pressuring Taj and two of his assistants to resign from the ISI because of alleged “double-dealing” with militants. [Australian, 9/29/2008] Taj will be replaced by Ahmed Shuja Pasha one day later (see September 30, 2008). [Daily Times (Lahore), 9/30/2008] Some will later say that the ISI had to have known that bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad (see May 2, 2011 and After).
