The Pakistani army denied yesterday that one of its majors was among a group of Pakistanis who Western officials say were arrested for feeding the CIA information before the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The New York Times, which first reported the arrests of five Pakistani informants on Tuesday, said an army major was detained who copied license plates of cars visiting the al-Qaeda chief’s compound in Pakistan in the weeks before the raid.
A Western official in Pakistan confirmed that five Pakistanis who fed information to the CIA before the May 2 operation were arrested by Pakistan’s top intelligence service, but Pakistani army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas denied an army major was arrested, saying the report was “false and totally baseless.”
The group of detained Pakistanis included the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, an army town not far from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, a US official said.
The owner was detained along with a “handful” of other Pakistanis, the official added.
The fate of the purported CIA informants who were arrested was unclear, but US officials told the Times that CIA Director Leon Panetta raised the issue when he visited Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
US-Pakistani relations have been strained over the raid by Navy SEALs on Pakistani territory, which embarrassed Pakistan’s military, and other issues.
One of the issues that has caused tension between the two countries is US drone missile strikes.
A pair of attacks targeted a suspected militant compound and a vehicle in the South Waziristan tribal area yesterday, killing at least 10 alleged insurgents, officials said.
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