Bin Laden rumours multiply

Maybe he is dead, either from US bombing, gunfire from his own men or even, as one newspaper reported, from cancer. Maybe he is holed up deep in a mountain cave or hiding in a fortified Pakistan border village. Or perhaps he is in Chechnya, Somalia or back home in Saudi Arabia.

Rumours multiply and divide under normal circumstances, and the involvement of the world’s most-wanted fugitive makes them even more ripe for the picking. So it is understandable that the debate over Osama bin Laden’s fate has come to resemble the geopolitical equivalent of Elvis sightings.