London: The family of the Pakistani Brigadier Usman Khalid has categorically denied any link between his father and Osama's hideout information being leaked to the CIA.
His family believes that he was wrongly implicated because of his outspoken views on Pakistani politics, reported the Telegraph.
In the aftermath of US journalist Seymour Hersh's explosive revelations on 2011 US raid, reports in Pakistani media identified an ex-ISI officer Brigadier Usman Khalid as the intelligence officer who informed the CIA about the secret hideout of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
According to a report in the Pakistani news site, the News Intenational, journalist Aamir Mir has revealed that Brigadier Usman Khalid was the Pakistani walk-in who sold the crucial Osama secret to the CIA for $25 millions and a US citizenship.
However, refuting the report strongly, the brigadier's son Abid Khalid told the Telegraph that his father “hadn’t visited the USA since 1976 and had lived in the UK since 1979 so there was no question of him of his family getting American citizenship”.
The family of the accused Pakistani general, who died a year ago after living in London for 35 years, has denied that he had any role in providing the secret information to the CIA.
The family also told the Telegraph that his father was suffering from cancer at that time.
“It simply doesn’t make sense. At the time that this was supposed to have happened, he was suffering from cancer and in and out of hospital,” his son told the Telegraph.
“My father He had no contact with the CIA and knew nothing about Osama Bin Laden, other than what he read in the newspapers, just like everyone else,” the Telegraph quoted his son as saying.
“He was politically very vocal, so he was an easy target,” his son added.
The family of Brigadier Khalid is fuming over the reports that have stirred a hornet's nest in Pakistani media ever since Pulitzer-prize winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a new account of how the US got its hands upon Osama bin Laden's secret hideout.
In a story published in the London Review of Books, Pulitzer-prize winning US investigative journalist Hersh rejects the US claim that it got information on Osama by tracking his couriers.
Instead, Hersh's account says, the CIA got to know about Osama's hideout by a Pakistani walk-in, who ratted on his fellow ISI colleagues and bartered the crucial information for $25 mn and a US citizenship.
Hersh’s report said that this officer along with his family was relocated to Washington, DC and now works as a consultant for the CIA.
The White House has however remained adamant that the US acted unilaterally and that the secret Operation Neptune Spear was carried without the knowledge or assistance of the government of Pakistan.
