Pakistani Officials Have No Record Of Man Killed With Bin Laden

CHARSADDA, Pakistan -- Pakistani officials say they have no record of the man said to be the owner of the compound in which Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed this week, RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal reports.

The identification card of Arshad Khan was found on one of the four men killed along with bin Laden by U.S. Special Operations Forces in the compound in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.

Arshad Khan was also listed in official documents as the owner of the property.

But Pakistani officials say they can find no trace of a man by that name or the village listed on his ID card as his hometown.

Some analysts believe Arshad Khan was a nom de guerre or fake identity for Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, the name of the bin Laden courier who was allegedly followed by U.S. secret services and ultimately led them to bin Laden.

Pakistani officials say Khan's ID card shows him to be a resident of Tangi Pass in the Charsadda district, an agricultural region close to Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

But an official in the Charsadda branch of the National Database and Registration Authority told RFE/RL there was no record of an Arshad Khan who was listed on the ID card as being the son of one Naqib Khan.

Charsadda official Fazl-e Maula, who is based in the town of Tangi, told RFE/RL there also was no village in the region called Tangi Pass. Maula said he had been based in the area for the past two years establishing the identity of locals.

"I have no knowledge of a place called [Tangi] Pass. We have never had any complaints from such a locale or anything happening there," Maula said.

"I have signed and [verified] many identity cards, which is part of my routine work. And I always verify the identity of applicants by going to people who know them but I have never heard of [Tangi] Pass."

Other locals told RFE/RL they had also never heard of a place called Tangi Pass.

Ehsan Shah, head of the police precinct in Tangi, said the police's attempt to establish the identity of Arshad Khan had been unsuccessful.

"We have thoroughly combed the whole of Tangi but have not been able to trace anybody with that identity," he said.

To his neighbors in Bilal Town, the Abbottabad neighborhood where bin Laden was killed on May 2, the man known as Arshad Khan was described as a robust man in his 30s or 40s.

He was said to have built the large compound in which bin Laden was living in 2005 after acquiring several smaller plots of land.