15 June 2010
An American man who claimed to have been on a mission to hunt down Osama Bin Laden has been arrested in northern Pakistan, police say.
They said that 52-year-old Gary Brooks Faulkner, from California, was detained in the mountains of Chitral district
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Chitral - because of its close proximity to Nuristan - is considered to be one of his possible hiding places.
June 15, 2010
By now, you’ve probably heard the news: a middle-aged construction worker from California was arrested in a forest in northwest Pakistan, carrying a samurai sword and a pistol, looking for Osama bin Laden.
He didn’t find him.
Before you chuckle, let me just say: Whatever else we might conclude about Gary Faulkner, our arrested American bounty hunter, we should give him this: He was looking in the right place.
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Last December, early on a Sunday morning, I sat at a long table in the basement of the Pentagon talking with an American military officer about the situation in Afghanistan. As the meeting ended, another man approached, wearing plain clothes and a plainer face.
“Chitral,” he said, half-smiling. “If you’re looking for Osama, you might try Chitral.”
He muttered something else, then walked away. The man didn’t identify himself, but he didn’t have to. He was almost certainly an intelligence analyst. If I had to guess, I’d say, given our location, that he worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The Pakistanis laughed when Faulkner told them he was on a quest to kill Bin Laden. But when asked if he thought he had a chance, Faulkner replied, "God is with me, and I am confident I will be successful in killing him."
Gary Brooks Faulkner was arrested in an area widely rumored to hide Al Qaeda’s top leaders. Chitral is a mountainous region on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan that is so remote it has until recently been cut off from the outside world by winter snows for months at a time. It’s a place where it is even difficult for the US to fly Predator drones.
Mr. Faulkner arrived in Chitral on June 3 and stayed in a hotel in Bumburat Valley, an area famous for its spring dancing festival
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In Greeley on Tuesday, Daren Paredes, a former employee of Mr. Faulkner, said he was "shocked" by the arrest in Pakistan. "He's not crazy," Mr. Paredes said. "He's a very intelligent man."
17 June 2010
With no small irony, Mr Faulkner apparently suffers from failing kidneys and requires regular dialysis, as is said to be the case with the man he was hunting. According to his family, his kidneys only function at nine per cent of normal capacity and aware of his declining condition he had been determined to make this trip to Pakistan, aware that this could be his "last hurrah".
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The whereabouts of his quarry, Osama bin Laden, have not been known with any precision since December 2001 when the al-Qa'ida leader was able to slip away from a determined assault by US special forces at the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan and cross into Pakistan. In the subsequent years, various suggestions as to his location have placed him in different parts of Pakistan's tribal areas. Several years ago, some suggested he may have been hiding in the Chitral area, where Mr Faulkner was detained.
June 18, 2010
Security officials in Pakistan are still questioning the bounty hunter who was on the trail of the world’s most wanted man — Osama bin Laden.
Different teams of civilian and military intelligence officials have been questioning Gary Faulkner for past three days, in the capital city of Islamabad.
An analyst on terrorism in Islamabad, who asked not to be identified, said Faulkner could be charged under the terrorism act if it's found he was involved in any act of terrorism or doubtful activities.
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Another indication that authorities are digging on is that Faulkner, who is also familiar with local language, and had made many trips to Pakistan over the past seven years and had been to Chitral several times over the past three years.
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“Pakistan is at war against terrorism and moving freely in the remote mountains of Chitral region for an American is not as easy as you can imagine, unless he or she have any “friends” in the area," said Khan, a senior police investigator in Peshawar, who asked to be identified with his last name only. "This made authorities very concerned.”
An American man detained in Pakistan for trying to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden has been freed and will return to the United States later Wednesday, his family told local media.
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Faulkner was detained on June 13 in the remote mountains of Chitral, once a rumored hiding place of bin Laden, near Afghanistan's Nuristan province, armed with a pistol, dagger, sword and night-vision equipment.
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Brother Scott Faulkner told CNN that Gary Faulkner had been motivated to hunt bin Laden out of a desire to avenge the September 11, 2001 attacks and a belief in God, saying he was not crazy, psychotic or schizophrenic.
Jun. 23, 2010
A Colorado man who traveled to Pakistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden said he'll "absolutely" try again, despite his arrest in the woods of northern Pakistan.
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But during a stopover in Los Angeles, Faulkner was asked by reporters if he planned to return. "Absolutely," he said. He added cryptically, "You'll find out at the end of August."
24 June 2010
Gary Brooks Faulkner arrived at Los Angeles airport on Wednesday. He said he would not give up on his mission.
June 24th, 2010
Hilary Clinton had recently lamented that if not higher politicians certain Pakistani officials were aware of the abodes of Osama and Al Qaeda in Pakistan-presumably in the bordering areas of Chitral and Afghan territory.
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Most studies support existence of relationship of co-existence between the ISI and the Afghan Taliban, and suggest that individuals or elements within, or connected to, the ISI and Pakistani military support or advise the insurgents. As per a US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, many analysts believe that Pakistan’s intelligence services know the whereabouts of Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leadership elements and likely even maintain active contacts with them at some level as part of a hedge strategy in the region. Some reports indicate that elements of Pakistan’s major intelligence agency and military forces aid the Taliban.
The Barg-e-Matal district is a known Taliban transit area to and from the northern Pakistani district of Chitral. Large numbers of former Hezb-i-Islami fighters aligned with renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his top battlefield commander Kashmir Khan are also active in Barg-e-Matal. Criminal elements who dominate the illegal lumber trade and gem mines in Barg-e-Matal are also affiliated with Hezb-i-Islami commanders.
08/18/2010
Instead of using a visa to enter Pakistan the conventional way, he wants to use a balloon or glider to fly into the mountainous wilderness where bin Laden is reportedly hiding.
"They are looking for me to come in low, but I'm coming in from above," he said. "I'll talk to anyone that has some sort of experimental craft. The job is not done. And I'm not going in as an American. I'm going in as a thief."
October 18, 2010
Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together, a senior NATO official said.
"Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved.
Rather, al Qaeda's top leadership is believed to be living in relative comfort, protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services, the official said.
The official said the general region where bin Laden is likely to have moved around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley which neighbors Afghanistan's Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the U.S. invasion in 2001.
March 25, 2011
After a prolonged lull, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a series of covert operations in the rugged Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan following strong tip-offs that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been criss-crossing the area in the past few weeks for high-profile meetings in militant redoubts.
Originally posted by makeitso
Bin Laden sets alarm bells ringing
March 25, 2011
After a prolonged lull, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a series of covert operations in the rugged Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan following strong tip-offs that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been criss-crossing the area in the past few weeks for high-profile meetings in militant redoubts.
Mr Obama said he had been briefed last August on a possible lead to Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts.
It led to intelligence that the al-Qaeda leader was hiding in a compound deep within Pakistan.
The president authorised an operation to "get Bin Laden" last week, he said, and on Sunday a small team of US forces undertook the operation.
After a "firefight" Bin Laden was killed and his body taken by US forces, the president said.
Then there is the break in pattern. All intelligence officials say Osama Bin Laden would never wander so far from the Afghan border.
This is corroborated by senior members of a leading Taliban faction, the Haqqani network - one of whom says he met Bin Laden near the town of Chitral two months ago.
Confirming the al-Qaeda leader was dead, he said he was puzzled that he had gone as far as Abbottabad.
"I scared the squirrel out of his hole, he popped his head up and he got capped," Faulkner told ABC News this week, referring to bin Laden's death. "[U.S. officials] were handed this opportunity on a platter from myself," he was quoted as saying.
Faulkner also told ABC that assertions that bin Laden had been holed up in his compound in Abbottabad for more than half a decade were not true.
"He hadn't been living there for no damn six years," he told ABC. "I absolutely flushed him out."
Should Faulkner get a portion of the reward?
