A middle-aged American suspected of being on a mission to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden has been arrested in Pakistan carrying a pistol, dagger and a sword, police said on Tuesday.
The 50-year-old man from California was detained on Monday in what was apparently the first such case in Pakistan since the United States offered a bounty of $25-million for the world’s most-wanted man.
The suspect was arrested in the northern mountains near Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, a Taliban stronghold, police officer Mumtaz Ahmad Khan said.
Police identified him as Gary Brooks Faulkner. He was caught armed with a pistol, a dagger and a sword, carrying night-vision goggles, a night-vision camera and religious literature on Christianity, Khan said.
Police said the American — who suffers from kidney problems and high blood pressure — arrived as a tourist in the district of Chitral, checked into a hotel and was given the customary security escort, before he vanished.
“On Sunday night, our security guard noticed that Gary had disappeared. A search operation was launched and we found him 14km short of the Pakistan-Afghan border. He was trying to enter Nuristan,” said Khan.
“He said 9/11 caused colossal losses to the US, therefore he wanted to locate Osama bin Laden and his friends.
“We presume he came here with an intention to kill them, though Gary did not say anything of the sort,” said Khan, who described the suspect of sound mind.
US diplomats in Pakistan were notified that an American had been arrested.
“We are now working on getting consular access and meeting with the American citizen,” said a spokesperson for the US embassy in Islamabad.
Saudi-born terror mastermind Bin Laden is now in his 50s and rumoured to be in poor health.
Intelligence on his whereabouts is vague, but the perceived wisdom is that he is out of reach in mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which Washington says is the al-Qaeda’s chief sanctuary.
Enormous rewards
The enormous rewards offered for Bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda aides have attracted bounty hunters to the region, but Faulkner was seemingly the first alleged hunter detained in Pakistan.
Police said Faulkner was in Chitral for 10 days before he vanished, staying in the scenic Bomborat valley with its crisp mountain air and thick forest.
“Gary said he bought his pistol locally and the rest of the equipment from California, but there was no entry for this equipment on his travel documents. He said he was going to Nuristan,” said Khan.
Pakistan says there is no evidence that Bin Laden is in the country, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she found it “hard to believe” that nobody in the government knew where al-Qaeda leaders were hiding.
Chitral attracts Western tourists for its hiking, stunning natural beauty and its brush with legend as the home of the Kalash people, some of whom are fair with light-coloured eyes. There has been academic speculation that they might be descended from an ancient Middle Eastern population or even from soldiers of Alexander the Great’s army, which conquered the area in the fourth century BC.
In April, a Greek man was released after a seven-month kidnapping ordeal that saw him smuggled into Nuristan after being snatched in Chitral. — AFP