Bin Laden no longer operational, claims terror judge

Osama bin Laden is not able to order operations from his hideout in Central Asia and focuses solely on trying to evade capture, one of Europe’s top anti-terrorism officials said Friday.

“As things stand today, with the pressure being exerted against this person and the leadership of al-Qaida, it would be hard to believe that he could still be operational and capable of giving orders,” Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon said at the Conference on Transnational Crime in Monaco.

But the threat of terrorism has not dissipated despite bin Laden’s isolation, Garzon said, because other leaders have emerged that can finance and direct groups independently of the terrorist leader.

“Al-Qaida converted itself into an ideology, and became a reference point, a franchise for other groups that no longer need its instructions,” Garzon said.

Bin Laden went into hiding during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. He is believed to be among sympathisers in Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas along the Afghan border, where Pakistan has deployed 70,000 troops to pursue him and their followers.

In Spain, Garzon has indicted 41 suspected al-Qaida members, some of them accused of providing financing and logistics for the suicide airliner attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

Last month, Spain and France agreed to create a joint police team to investigate al-Qaida financing in Spain – a staging ground for the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States and the scene of a deadly train bombing in March by militants linked to bin Laden’s organisation.