This Article is From May 08, 2011

Osama bin Laden's neighbour in Abbottabad freed after questioning

Osama bin Laden's neighbour in Abbottabad freed after questioning
Abbottabad: Pakistani security forces have freed a man who lives in a small house opposite the main entrance of the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces, after questioning him, his son has said.

Shamraiz was detained shortly after Monday's raid on a compound near the Pakistan Military Academy that killed the Al Qaeda chief.

His son Qasim Khan said his father telephoned him late last night and told him that the army had freed him after interrogating him.

"My father is well but he did not talk much and just said that his cell phone had been taken away by the army," Qasim said.

He said that his father had gone to their ancestral village rather than returning to their house in Bilal Town, the suburb of Abbottabad where bin Laden's compound is located.

Qasim said his father had been put under house arrest and security men were guarding their ancestral home.

Earlier, Qasim and his grandfather had told journalists that Shamraiz was taken away by Pakistani security personnel hours after the US Special Forces conducted the raid on the compound where bin Laden had lived for five years.

Bin Laden was killed with his son and two other men.

Shamraiz's wife Nasim told reporters that they had been living in the neighbourhood of bin Laden's compound but she never had any knowledge about the people inside.

She said that she had seen two brothers who lived in the compound and they sometimes came out with some children.

"However, we never saw any women," Nasim said.

Qasim said the two brothers Tariq Khan and Arshad Khan, believed to be Al Qaeda couriers  told them that they belonged to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and Charsadda, another key town some 40 km from Peshawar.

They had a red Suzuki vehicle and no one in the area knew anything about their profession, he said.

The prayer leader of the mosque in Bilal Town claimed Shamraiz Khan had served as a guard at bin Laden's compound but Shamraiz's family rejected this and said he was a farmer who sometimes did other work for daily wages.

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