Pakistan arrests CIA’s bin Laden informants

PAKISTAN’S intelligence service has arrested the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe Osama bin Laden’s compound before the US raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, as well as a “handful” of other Pakistanis.

In Pakistan, a Western official confirmed a New York Times report that five of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the CIA before the May 2 raid were arrested by Pakistan’s top military spy agency.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. A spokesman for the Pakistani spy agency declined to comment.

The Times, in an article posted on its website late Tuesday, said detained informants included a Pakistani army major who, officials said, copied the licence plates of cars visiting bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in the weeks before the raid.

The fate of the CIA informants who were arrested was unclear, but American officials told the newspaper that CIA Director Leon Panetta raised the issue when he visited Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.

US-Pakistan relations have been strained over the raid by Navy SEALs on Pakistani territory, which was a blow to Pakistan’s military, and other issues. Officials said the arrests of the informants was just the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the two nations.

The Times said that at a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael Morell, the deputy CIA director, to rate Pakistan’s co-operation with the United States on counter-terrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10.

“Three,” Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange, the newspaper said.

American officials said Morell’s comment was a snapshot of the current relationship and did not represent the Obama administration’s overall assessment.

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, said the CIA and the Pakistani spy agency “are working out mutually agreeable terms for their co-operation in fighting the menace of terrorism”.